Q&A with Over the Rhine

CB: Have you been surprised by how the choreographers interpreted the songs?
OTR:We have always encouraged and left room for listeners to our music to form their own response to the songs. Everyone can lay the transparency of their particular life on a good song and find points of intersection. But everyone’s story is unique. So we are completely comfortable with and inspired to see the results of the choreographers’ interpretations. Singing and dancing are both some of the most intense emotional human expressions available to us, so the combination, to us, is wonderful and very moving.
 
CB: Cincinnati Ballet and the community have been thrilled and excited about this collaborative performance since it was announced last spring.
OTR: Yes, we are thrilled too, and creative energy and excitement is contagious. We love finding new ways of presenting our music, and this is one of the most exciting collaborations of our 20-year career.
 
Being from Cincinnati, you have a long-term relationship with this city, the same city that supports a prominent, full-time resident ballet company. Can you reflect on that connection?
Cincinnati has been supportive to us over the years, and we have tried to continually find ways of expressing gratitude for this support. Remaining rooted in Ohio and using Cincinnati as our home base, as opposed to relocating the band to Nashville or New York is the most obvious expression of our gratitude. In 2011 it feels more real to have a home to operate from as opposed to jumping in to a city to try to advance a career. Cincinnati should be proud of its ballet company, its symphony orchestra, its cultural heritage – and the fact that our music can be an ongoing part of Cincinnati’s cultural life is of course an honor.
 
Any thoughts on the uniqueness of the collaboration with Cincinnati Ballet (New Works 2009 and 2010, and now Infamous Love Songs)? Not many other bands are taking on a collaboration like this. What attracted you to the project?
I paid much of my way through college by accompanying ballet classes. I always loved playing the piano with a room full of dancers moving to what I was playing. And I often improvised - made up music on the spot – because I was inspired and caught up in the moment. It’s like a miracle happening in front of your eyes – the music is suddenly alive and three-dimensional. So to Karin and I, it was a perfect idea to let dancers and choreographers bring our songs to life in their own unique way.
 
Do you foresee further cross-disciplinary art projects in the future?
We would like to play with more orchestras, and do an outdoor concert with the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra when the time is right. I would also eventually like to do more film scoring – again the idea of attaching music to motion and emotion.