Ivory Tower was a great melding of Gonzales’ lush piano and Boys Noize’s driving rhythms, but rather than being a one-off project, it seems to have been just the beginning of a longer-term collaboration. Continue reading
Fans of Chilly Gonzales have impeccable taste (obviously), and always seem up for a challenge, so we at SoloGonzales decided to create a series of Gonz-themed crossword puzzles that combine Gonzales history, songs, musical knowledge, and just about anything else related to Gonzales. Continue reading
Gonzales has created a mish-mash of beats, samples, pop melodies and harsh tokes that sticks in your head, sticks to the wall, leaves a mess on the floor, makes long distance phone calls and never does the dishes. You need fun friends like this.
- James Keast – exclaim.ca (2000)
Über Alles signals the imminent rise to world domination of a major talent. Twisted pop genius.
- Dave Stelfox – spannerd.org (2000)
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Man, this is war – where careers get killed and that’s not a metaphor – Gonzales Never Stop (Rap version)
War and conflict has and will always occur between predators and prey, rivals for mates, siblings, and even between parents and their offspring. While it’s possible that our species could have arrived where we are today in the absence of conflict, historical evidence overwhelmingly supports the notion that conflict played a huge role in establishing the relatively peaceful lifestyle we enjoy today. The problem is that we’re still ‘wired’ for conflict – we haven’t quite ‘given up the fight’. This is especially evident sporting events, where the struggle on the field emulates a ‘mini-war’ of sorts. In the same vein, life’s struggles weren’t lost on composers, who seem to constantly try to capture conflict within music and opera. The entertainment value of conflict within sports and music hasn’t escaped Gonzales, as he recently told Thomas Bärnthaler of Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitunh Magazin: Continue reading
Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art. – Frédéric Chopin
10 years ago, in the fall of 2003, Gonzales began composing a series of short songs for solo piano that would eventually redefine his career and expose his music to a worldwide audience. Disenchanted with his role as producer for French icons such as Jane Birkin and Charles Aznavour, the recent Parisian transplant transformed his feelings of isolation into piano pieces that combined the emotion of Ravel, Debussy, and Satie with the pop sensibilities of Michael Jackson. The resulting album, appropriately dubbed “Solo Piano”, seemed to represent a radical departure from his previous ventures, which were more closely associated with prankster rap and hip-hop. Continue reading
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
Those words (attributed to Winston Churchill) resonate with a tone of vast experience, and leads to other questions relating to the nature of success and the lessons of failure. By all accounts, the Hungarian composer György Ligeti was extremely successful, yet constantly downplayed any accolades bestowed upon him. Something drove him to continually venture into new musical territory that came with a high probability of failure, yet with his vast experience, he was generally able to contribute something novel to the world of music. In the theme of success and failure, Gonzales recently tweeted a link to an article by James Martin in Canada’s “Globe and Mail” newspaper: Continue reading
It would appear that the most successful and prolific authors, filmmakers, and musicians have all been able to master one key aspect within their respective fields of expertise: the mastery of emotions. Their ability to make people fearful, cheerful, inspired, melancholy, and so on, reflects years of experience, trial-and-error, or (in some cases) sheer luck. Authors and filmmakers have the advantage of using or creating emotional states though mental or physical images – no easy feat unto itself, but certainly much easier than evoking the same emotional power without using any words or mental images at all. Continue reading
Gonzales recently said that his early musical career was a “roller coaster” – presumably it travelled at a high rate of speed, was simultaneously thrilling and scary, with lots of ups and downs (and you had to be strapped in to survive the ride). We recently had a chance to sit down and discuss Gonzales’ early days in his band ‘Son’ with someone who was in the same coaster car – the original drummer from Son – Anthony Michelli. Anthony certainly corroborates the ‘roller-coaster’ metaphor, and reviews from a television appearance at the time indicated that ‘Son’ was “too crazed to even fit in the TV screen.” Continue reading
In our previous post, we took a close look at half the tracks on Chilly Gonzales’ summer Mixtape – Classical Selections Vol. 1: Piano Music. In Part II, we analyze the rest. The complete mixtape is available here.
By examining the track selections in greater detail, we hope to uncover some of the reasons why Gonzales selected those particular tracks and composers for inclusion in his mixtape. Continue reading
Mixtapes are a great way of expressing a love for music and at the same time, allowing people to peer into the type of music that drives and inspires entertainers, such as Chilly Gonzales. When Gonzales released Vol.1 of a 3-volume set of classical selections, we weren’t disappointed. Although the set does come with a tracklist, we felt like there was a back-story to the selections that was missing – why these artists, and why these songs? We set out to analyze each track to try and find the elements that Gonzales finds appealing. Continue reading