Chilly Gonzales
Chilly Gonzales, Grammy-winning Canadian pianist and entertainer currently living in Europe, is known as much for the intimate piano touch of best-selling albums Solo Piano and Solo Piano II as for his showmanship and composition for award-winning stars. "Gonzo", as he is known to close collaborators, aims to be a man of his time, approaching the piano with classical and jazz training but with the attitude of a rapper.
Chilly Gonzales holds the Guinness World Record for the longest solo concert at over 27 hours. He performs and writes songs with Jarvis Cocker, Feist and Drake, among others. With Never Stop, Chilly Gonzales composed a global hit for the inaugural Apple iPad 2 campaign. In 2014 he won a Grammy for his collaboration on Daft Punk’s Best Album of the Year and composed the best-selling book of easy piano pieces Re-Introduction Etudes. With his last album Chambers, Chilly Gonzales devoted himself to finding a modern take on chamber music.
Gonzales is also a respected cultural commentator and “musical scientist”, as seen in his hit web series Pop Music Masterclass (WDR in Germany and CBC in Canada), BBC Radio 1 documentary Classical Connections, The History of Music on Arte and Apple Music's Beats1 radio show Music's Cool with Chilly Gonzales in which Gonzales's unique analysis introduces listeners to the theory and fun of entire musical genres through the work of one exemplary artist in a 2-hour monthly broadcast. He also writes newspaper and magazine opinion pieces in The Guardian, i-D Magazine, Clash Magazine and others, and is involved in conferences, keynote addresses and awards ceremonies for the likes of ZEITmagazin, Orange, the Junos or lit.Cologne international literature festival.
2018 sees the cinema release of Shut Up and Play the Piano, a career retrospective documentary directed by Philipp Jedicke that premiered at the A-list Berlinale Film festival. Following the artist from his native Canada to late 90's underground Berlin, and via Paris to the world's great philharmonic halls, the film explores his persona by interweaving newly shot interviews and concert scenes with fictional materials of totally different time periods. Features frequent collaborators Peaches, Leslie Feist and producer Renaud Letang among many others.
Most recently, Chilly Gonzales ventured into a new form of entrepreneurship. A culmination of recent years’ explorations in teaching, Gonzo inaugurated his very own music school: The Gonzervatory. During this all-expenses-paid residential music performance workshop held in Paris, 7 selected students explored Musical Humanism, audience psychology and what it means to be a performing musician in 2018. After a week of intensive coaching, masterclasses and rehearsals, these young musicians performed a concert for an audience of 1500 fans with Chilly Gonzales himself as Master of Ceremony. The Gonzervatory Workshop and Concerts were livestreamed on pan-European TV station Arte Concert to record-breaking audiences (Arte’s 2nd most viewed concert). Plans are already being made for the 2019 edition.
