Chilly Gonzales Solo Piano Pdf

[Arleen Smelko]

SoloPiano III is the final part in a trilogy by Classical jazz pianist, Chilly Gonzales. It is staggeringly beautiful with an emphasis on his brilliance as a composer and as a solo performer. Chilly Gonzales, or 'Gonzo' as he's affectionately known, is to the piano what Django Reinhardt was to the guitar. Solo Piano III is more free-form and jazz-like; accidental notes give way to accidental brilliance in what is Gonzales' most breathtaking piece of work to date.

Evoking their brilliance and borrowing from past masters and lone pioneers, the album boasts dedications to people such as Amelia Earhart, Fanny Mendelssohn as well as contemporary musicians, Beach House.

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. He's just released a follow-up to that recording titled Solo Piano II.

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. His parents know him as Jason Charles Beck, to his friends, he's Gonzo. So who is Chilly Gonzales? "Chilly Gonzales is my brand name," he explains, "and I think Jason Beck, my real name, just didn't really have a ring to it. I wanted a name that was a little bit ridiculous, that was far from my roots. As a Hungarian Jew, you can't really go much farther than a fake Mexican, can you?

"I grew up with Boy George and Frankie Goes to Hollywood and the Smiths. These figures were very complex and at the same time ridiculous. And that's really the culture I grew up with, that's who I wanted to be. I think you look back and think, OK, those guys like Franz Liszt, for example, who definitely had the attitude of the pop artist. Erik Satie, obviously a very conceptual thinker, ahead of his time, using very simple forms. So whether it's virtuosity or simplicity or humor, there have been people along the way that realized that the combination of being a slave to your audience and being musically talented is a very potent cocktail!"

Chilly Gonzales has borrowed the idea of sampling from the world of MTV and rap. He says music should be simple, it should be economical, it should be one basic idea more or less repeated over and over again with a couple variations. "My piano music is that," he explains. "I borrow a lot from the colors of classical music and I borrow a lot of the jazz touch in how I play the piano."

On the piece Evolving Doors Chilly explores into the colors of J.S. Bach. "I was looking for a way to recreate the effect that you get in some of the Bach harpsichord music," Chilly explains, "a lot of furious octave passages. I stumbled upon a much more brutal way of playing octaves, just exchanging my left and right hands and creating almost like an echo pedal that maybe Elvis would have used when he was singing, just a very, very short delay. So I created a kind of etude-type piece around that way of playing octaves, more or less recreating a feeling I have when I listen to Bach as a pop fan.

"On a song like La Bulle, I'm really referencing that grey area between European classical music and jazz music. I think Scott Joplin figures into that, Gershwin as well, and of course the French Impressionists."

Chilly composed a piece titled White Keys to prove that music played on white keys doesn't always have to sound like a flowery fairy tale. "So I started my song in D," he explains, "and basically used white keys and I shifted the range of the piano. Each subsequent verse goes down an octave and by the middle of the piece I'm playing very, very low, dark stuff that you could never really imagine would sound like a white-key piece. Chopin had a black-key etude, which I guess was six flats. So I have a white-key etude with no flats, no sharps.

Whether he's mixing Bach and Elvis Presley, or backing up well-known rap or pop stars, or breaking a world record for the longest solo piano performance (which he did in 2009), Chilly Gonzales is eager to make music for his generation, without worrying too much about conventions from an earlier day. "I think I always saw myself as an entertainer," Chilly admits, "because that means you're really taking pains to reach an audience."

The iconoclastic Grammy-winning pianist and composer is about to release the final album of his Solo Piano trilogy. In this typically entertaining interview, he describes the making of the record, his love of the underdog, and his satisfaction with the current state of the music biz.

Grammy-winning Canadian pianist, entertainer and composer Chilly Gonzales will release the final album of his Solo Piano trilogy, Solo Piano III, on Sept. 7 through his Gentle Threat label. The set comes six years after Solo Piano II and features more dissonance, tension and ambiguity as a reflection of our current state.

A career retrospective documentary directed by Philipp Jedicke called Shut Up And Play The Piano will be released this fall, and Gonzales returns to Canada in October for concerts in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City. For more information go to chillygonzales.com.

Chilly Gonzales' career has been filled with a kind of restless exploration -- including albums of mesmerizing solo piano, and pop collaborations with the likes of Feist, Drake and Daft Punk. But now he's trying something new.

Chilly Gonzales tells As It Happens guest host Laura Lynch, "I came across the fairy tale a couple of years ago when I changed my name, Jason Beck, to to the persona, Chilly Gonzales. A couple of years later I remembered reading it and thinking oh, that won't happen to me."

Chilly Gonzales is known not only for his eclectic taste in music. He's also known for his wardrobe. Gonzales is famous for showing up on stage in a bathrobe and slippers. But for his new production, he's getting a little fancy. He is dressed by fashion designer, Herr von Eden.

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