Gonzo pianist could very well be a genius
Chilly Gonzales adopts gonzo performing style, but it would be a mistake not to take him seriously. Gaby Wood explains.
“Hi! This is Chilly Gonzales, the musical genius.” If you’ve ever seen Gonzales live or on YouTube you’ll know that he often begins his casual performances with this talk-show-host style of address.
Gonzales was born in Montreal in 1972 as Jason Beck and raised in Toronto before returning to Montreal to study at McGill University. Whether he is actually a genius is hard to measure, but he certainly does a good job of seeming like one. Pianist, composer, performer, producer and prolific collaborator, he lies somewhere between Sid Vicious and Johannes Brahms, with a dash of Dada thrown in. He came up with the Gonzales moniker decades ago — inspired by the cartoon character Speedy — but the shortened form, “gonzo,” has largely taken over his stage style.
For instance: Gonzales will typically arrive on stage wearing a black dressing gown and slippers. He sometimes climbs on to the piano, or into it. He bashes it till he bleeds, plays wearing a blindfold, crowd-surfs. He sweats to near-melting point. In 2009, he set a Guinness World Record for the longest solo performance, after playing the piano for 27 hours, three minutes and 44 seconds.
But lest you imagine the gonzo persona to be an entirely solo affair, his collaborations and instructional projects are conducted at equally high intensity. He’ll play with orchestras and audience members. He’s worked with Canadian rapper Drake and singer-songwriter Feist, also Canadian, and won a Grammy for his contribution to Daft Punk’s 2013 album Random Access Memories.
“Hi,” he says, greeting me at the gates of the Steinway factory in Hamburg. “I’m Jason.”
We’re due to take a tour of the factory and Gonzales will give a short concert for the staff. Having spent long periods of time in Berlin and Paris, he now lives in Cologne. And his stripped-back self is very much in keeping with the ethos of his Solo Piano series of albums.
Though individual tracks have become famous — such as White Keys or Dot — part of the success of Gonzales’s mesmerizing solo recordings lies in their overall ambience. And Gonzales doesn’t mind providing background music. Once, in Toronto, he had a job playing for ladies as they shopped for lingerie.
“I’m not frustrated when people aren’t actively listening to me,” he says, “I love the idea that I’m still creating the mood. I think I could have been happy as a lounge pianist in a lingerie store for the rest of my days, probably. Whereas to not be able to even be around music because of another day job would have been very frustrating.”
Growing up, Jason was the entertainer in the family. His older brother, Christophe, became a Hollywood composer — he has written, among other things, the soundtrack for the Disney hit Frozen. While Chris was happy to remain behind the scenes, Jason thrived in the spotlight.
There was more to being an entertainer than just getting attention. “In a weird way, the focus is off you,” Gonzales says. “Because you’re pre-empting being seen. You’re deciding what to show. When I go onstage, I am showing. And in life, I hate being seen.”
In some ways, Gonzales embraces automatism in his working life. Just now, he has been rehearsing for his forthcoming tour with Solo Piano III, and in order to free himself to be in the moment when he’s on stage, he practises the pieces entirely mechanically, building up muscle memory. He refers to his hero Franz Liszt, who read books as he practised. Gonzales will often listen to a podcast, “an interview with a comedian or something,” as he’s playing, and 40 minutes later he realizes he’s rattled through his whole set. He has to do this every day, so that once he’s on stage he can kick in to “OK, I’ve gotta perform now.”
At Steinway, Gonzales gives his lunchtime concert on the factory floor, then asks for a volunteer. “Do you play, Daniela?”
She shakes her head. Gonzales asks her to choose
three notes. “Just try a few until you find something you like.” The only restrictions are that they should be white keys, and that they shouldn’t be neighbouring notes. She experiments.
He says: “I like that one, you know why? It’s traurig.” F, D, A: sad, sorrowful, sombre.
She repeats the melody of three with her right hand, he listens and begins to introduce chords alongside her. At the time, this felt very moving to me. Later, when I watched the video on my phone, it just seemed entertaining. The magic trick aspect remained but the implied tenderness of approach and guidance was gone. In the moment there was definitely something more. Was it the effect of the Steinway piano itself ? The raw setting of the factory floor? The knowledge that Daniela had a hand in making something she was now bringing to life in a new way?
Gonzales is the first to point out that experience is everything, but he also makes clear, so much of our hearing is psychological. How to retrieve, in one’s mind, the sound of his emerging accompaniment, gentled out of nowhere in support of a stranger, which made something hesitant seem whole?