Portland Cello Project reimagines ‘ K Computer’ live for the album’s 20th anniversary

When the members of the Portland Cello Project realized that they wanted to take the classical and contemporary bridging ensemble seriously, they agreed that meant avoiding Radiohead all together.

“The group kind of started as a joke to bring cellos to bars,” says co-founder Doug Jenkins. “What’s kept it around is that we’ve committed to make it high-quality, not to give into a trend. That meant implicitly making a commitment to never do Radiohead. I felt like their palate is much larger than what we can re-create.”

That rule didn’t last. Five years ago, when the wind instrument quintet City of Tomorrow invited Jenkins’ group to collaborate on a tribute to Radiohead’s seminal album “OK Computer” for the record’s 15th anniversary, they couldn’t say no.

They approached the arrangements carefully, and when the show was over, much of the album’s material stayed in their repertoire. Five years later, the Portland Cello Project is revisiting “OK Computer” in its entirety to mark its 20th birthday.

The tour stops at McGlohon Theater Monday. The small orchestra includes six cellists, a French horn player, a trumpeter, a drummer, and guest vocalist Patti King of the Shins.

“It’s a diverse cast, too,” says Jenkins. “The trumpet player has played with Bootsy Collins and Aretha Franklin. The French horn (player) balances him out as a principal symphony player.”

Drummer Tyrone Hendrix, who’s worked with Prince and Stevie Wonder, is the only member that isn’t classically trained — which worried Jenkins at first. He proved to be a secret weapon.

“I was worried because he doesn’t read music or chart things out, and he had to learn all of ‘OK Computer’ in six hours,” Jenkins explains. “It has so many rhythmic changes and funny counting, but he did it. And his presence is known in every song.”

What started as a lark 15 years ago, when Jenkins and other classical musicians found themselves living in Portland, has evolved over time. But the mission — “bringing cello into places you wouldn’t normally see it, or playing music you wouldn’t normally hear on the cello,” says Jenkins — remains the same.

And although the lineup isn’t static and players come and go, nearly everyone Jenkins wanted to be part of the “OK Computer” tour accepted his invitation.

“It’s a testament to how many people enjoy Radiohead’s music,” he says. That’s not to say Radiohead is the only artist you’ll hear at the show.

Given its repertoire of roughly 1,000 songs, it can dip into classical or let the audience decide what else they might want to hear.

“Sometimes we play ‘What if fill-in-the-blank opened for Radiohead?’” he says. “We might do Dizzy Gillespie or Elliott Smith. The other night, it was clear that the audience were just there for the Radiohead stuff, so that’s what we played.”