Chilly Gonzales Shuts Up to Play the Piano for Drake. Chilly Gonzales vs. His Ego: No Longer Needs 'As Much of the Attention'
Interviews. Shows. Q's Top 20: #15 - Chilly Gonzales | Q with Jian Ghomeshi | CBC Radio. Chilly Gonzales: Pianist, Rapper, Provocateur. Hide captionChilly Gonzales' latest album is Solo Piano II. Alexandre Isard Chilly Gonzales' latest album is Solo Piano II. The musician known as Chilly Gonzales is difficult to introduce, if only because no one aspect of his career defines him.
The Canadian-born performer has shown there's very little he's afraid to try. To wit: Gonzales has collaborated with Iggy Pop, Daft Punk, Peaches, Feist and Drake. In Montreal, he led a string-quartet mash-up of "Another One Bites the Dust" and the theme to the TV show Knight Rider, while wearing a bathrobe and slippers on stage.
"Rap is my only modern love," Gonzales tells NPR's Laura Sullivan. Speaking of which: In 2009, Gonzales shattered the Guinness World Record for longest solo piano performance, pulling off a concert that lasted 27 hours, 3 minutes and 44 seconds. YouTube Chilly Gonzales performs a medley of covers during his record-breaking 27-hour concert in 2009. Chilly Gonzales warms up to Glenn Gould CBC Music. Chilly Gonzales Studio Paradiso (San Francisco, CA) Jun 8. The Musical Genius Gives Words by Sean Moeller, Illustration by Johnnie Cluney, Recording engineered by Shawn Biggs at Studio Paradiso, San Francisco, Calif. A session like the one that Chilly Gonzales taped for us in San Francisco a month or so ago, defies any explanation that we could give it.
The brilliant Canadian pianist felt that it was his duty to use our studio and our live broadcasting ways to make musicians better, while showcasing exactly why he was the stubbly man to assist. The pieces that he played - some of which are previews and will appear on his forthcoming new record, "Solo Piano II," set to release this summer - are light and feathery. They're arrangements and progressions that have been stewed over, edited and kicked many times over, so that they meet Gonzales' high standards. Before each of these pieces, Gonzales introduces the song with a lengthy speech that comes off as confident and humorous.
Chilly Gonzales: piano genius or madman? CBC Music. Chilly Gonzales in a Minor Key. Chilly Gonzales, the hybrid classical musician and orchestral rapper from Montreal who lives in Paris, was recently in the city. From his hotel downtown, he took a taxi to Times Square to see if he could find some sheet music at Colony Music, on Broadway at Forty-ninth Street, next door to the Brill Building, where you could walk in and hum a song and the staff would usually be able to find the music for you.
Gonzales’s P.R. rep, Anthony D’Amato, was waiting at the entrance to tell him that Colony, it turned out, had closed in August, after sixty-four years. The windows were empty, but the electronic zipper above them was still working—“I found it at the Colony,” one message read. Gonzales opened the door to reveal a woman taping a box shut. Gonzales withdrew to the sidewalk.
“So, close-ish?” Gonzales is forty, and his given name is Jason Beck. Dowling Music is in the Steinway Building, where, in the showroom, the piano salesman sat behind desks like bank managers. Baker's Dozen | A Presidential Suite: Chilly Gonzales's Favourite Albums. For Chilly Gonzales - erstwhile dressing gown-onstage virtuoso musician, bombastic comedy-rapper and desk rider for countless artists - endless reinvention is something of a calling card. So a return to the piano and nothing else set-up of 2004’s Solo Piano for his new record (titled, in appropriate plainspeak, Solo Piano II) might seem out of character. “Well, for me, that represents a risk at this point”, he says. “I could have made a second Solo Piano record and called it something else, but I actively wanted to have the challenge of competing with what most people think of as the most touching work I did. People who like Solo Piano have a pretty emotional attachment to it, and that goes pretty deep, and the people who listen to it tend to listen to it still today, eight years later.
So, yeah, I found it to be a real challenge to actively make my Godfather Part II, so to speak!” Chilly Gonzales unveils new Solo Piano II release. Chilly Gonzales and the thrill of piano battles. In the 1998 film Legend of 1900, a fictional pianist (charismatically portrayed by Tim Roth) takes on Jelly Roll Morton (a very cool Clarence Williams III) in a piano duel. At one point, believing that one of the men isn’t taking the battle seriously, an audience member wonders aloud, “Does he not understand that it’s a contest?” While rappers have long embraced the notion of competition, indie artists and other career musicians tend to see themselves as above the fray, and believe in music as a purely artistic endeavour. Chilly Gonzales, the intriguing Canadian musician and producer, disagrees. “To be ambitious and to openly court people’s love is now seen as taboo,” he says from his Paris home.
Gonzales, born Jason Charles Beck in Montreal, is not an uncorrupted artist, if there even is such a thing. As a provocative rapper, determined pop-music challenger and classically trained pianist, the 40-year-old dynamo competes – sometimes, if need be, with himself. It wasn’t always that way. Watch Chilly Gonzales play Solo Piano II for The Line of Best Fit. Ahead of his appearance at London’s Rough Trade East record store earlier this month, we threw out the punters, turned the music down and watched on, dazzled, as Chilly Gonzales went to work on a piano for us. Throwing out a medley of the best parts (and there are many) from Solo Piano II, which dropped last month on Gentle Threat, we had to edit out the gentle thud of a collective jaws dropping… Chilly plays selected UK dates throughout the Autumn this year: October 20 - London Barbican w/ BBC Symphony Orchestra SOLD OUT December 2 - Manchester Royal Northern College Of Music3 - Coventry Warwick Arts Centre5 - Liverpool Capstone Theatre Centre.
Not Your Average Musical Genius: Chilly Gonzales Plays The Hotel Utah: Culture/Entertainment: SFAppeal. There are plenty of rappers claiming to be the most crafty, skilled or original. But Chilly Gonzales may be the only one who isn't full of it. And just to be clear, rapper is an understatement. Gonzales is a pianist, producer, composer of classical music and a self-described musical genius . After seeing his show at the Hotel Utah on Friday it's hard to argue with him.
Over the course of a couple hours, Gonzales twisted jaw-dropping piano riffs, snide rhymes, and stories from his career as a self-recognized under-dog. There were only a couple dozen people at the Utah, and the shouts drifting from the bar in the room over were often obnoxious, but the Paris-resident was torturing himself on purpose. His goal was to play skeezy little bars in order to boost his "grudge-factor," he said.
The music flying from his piano was often complex both rhythmically and melodically, but the show was as simple as possible. -If the piano is played fast enough, fingers will actually blur into oblivion. Experiencing Chilly Gonzales Live « Quip. Without hesitation or exaggeration, I can say I’ve never witnessed anything quite like Chilly Gonzales’ show at the Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto on Tuesday night. The self-proclaimed music genius made a two-hour set – the latest installment of his Piano Talk Show series – feel like 20 minutes through the sheer power of his charisma, wit, and musical prowess, combining equal parts concert, music-theory lesson, and stand-up comedy.
In essence, on stage, Chilly “Gonzo” (as he repeatedly called himself) is like an otherworldly cross between George Gershwin, George Carlin, and Eminem. It all started conventionally enough. Gonzales entered stage left, dressed in his usual silk bathrobe and green slippers, to a hushed audience of retired couples and 20- and 30-something urbanites. He smiled, bowed, and immediately went into three unaccompanied instrumental piano tunes. His hair flailed as his fingers raced up and down the keys while remaining fluent. Chilly Gonzales on minor keys. After collecting his reworkings, edits and 'mash-ups' – including a pairing of pairing hip hop anthems like 'A Milli' with dramatically melancholic minor keys [below] – on his 'Pianist Envy' mixtape, multi-instrumentalist and all-round musical outlier Chilly Gonzales has given us some of his favourite minor key moments as an in depth insight to his obsession alongside an exclusive clip of his new 'Composing Solo Piano II' series...
"The monarchies of Europe called the major key "major" because it was important. It was majorly important to celebrate the status quo, and thus became the musical method to sell a conservative viewpoint. If you think I'm going too far with this, consider that the melancholy and complaint of the minor key was called "minor", as if to undermine the validity of sadness. A chord is made up of a tonic, a "third" (3 notes above the tonic) and a fifth. It's the third that determines if it is major or minor. Daft Punk - Veridis Quo: Photos by Alexandre Isard. Chilly Gonzales. Chilly Gonzales is lounging in his trademark bathrobe and slippers in an ornate old-fashioned sitting room backstage at Convocation Hall, where he’s just finished playing as part of a celebration of Glenn Gould’s career.
He’s cheerful and relaxed, but in keeping with his super-villain persona, he also gleefully complains and critiques the performances of the other musicians on the bill. “I put a lot of work into preparing for this, but it seems like everyone else just saw it as an opportunity for self-promotion,” Gonzales cracks. This might seem less like joking if he didn’t eagerly embrace self-promotion himself. This is, after all, the guy who set the world record for the longest solo piano performance and who legally changed his name from Jason Beck, all while happily admitting to doing it for the attention.
If he were all about stunts and jokes, though, we probably wouldn’t care so much about a rapping piano wizard who’s half comedian and half self-described “musical genius.” Chilly Gonzales - Words and Music - 2012 | WFUV Radio. Chilly Gonzales – “Kenaston” (Stereogum Premiere) BBC World Service - The Strand, Director Matteo Garrone on his new film Reality. New Classical Tracks: Chilly Gonzales - Solo Piano II. October 9, 2012 Copy and paste the HTML below to embed this audio onto your web page. Audio player code: ST.
PAUL, Minn. — Chilly Gonzales is a classically-trained Canadian-born musician from the MTV era whose goal is to be a man of his time. When he's not improvising at the keyboard, he's dabbling in rap, pop, and electronic music. One of his songs has even been used in an iPad commercial. Chilly Gonzales made his first solo piano album in 2004. Chilly Gonzales is a cross-over artist who, every once in a while, dips his toe into the world of classical and jazz using rap and pop as his entry point. "I grew up with Boy George and Frankie Goes to Hollywood and the Smiths. Chilly Gonzales has borrowed the idea of sampling from the world of MTV and rap. On the piece Evolving Doors Chilly explores into the colors of J.S.
"On a song like La Bulle, I'm really referencing that grey area between European classical music and jazz music. Spinning on Air: Chilly Gonzales. The musical genius of Chilly Gonzales - Post City Magazines - November 2012 - Toronto, Ontario. Midtown’s prodigal piano man waxes on escaping to Europe, his friend Feist and why he’ll always be a rapper at heart Judith Muster A 40-year-old man with a disorderly shock of brown hair, wearing a bathrobe and plush slippers walks onstage and seats himself at a grand piano.
His name is Chilly Gonzales. His name and getup might be pageantry, but Gonzales’ music is, simply put, the real deal. Over the past decade, the eclectic, underground Canadian performer has fronted an alt-rock band, released three rap electro-pop albums (which garnered him a loyal European following), collaborated with artists from Feist and Peaches to Jane Birkin and Charles Aznavour and has now released a second mesmerizing album of original compositions for piano. “My grandfather showed me the piano at around age three, and I was pretty much stuck on it since then,” Gonzales says, which conjures up the image of a toddler in a silk robe tickling the ivories.
On paper, things weren’t going badly. Chillygonzales: My advice to musicians that... Excellent Advice From Chilly Gonzales | Audio Production.