When the hair on your arm is in a state of permanent erection and your eyes become instantly wet, you know you're experiencing something extraordinary. In this case, it was the ménage à trois of some of the greatest piano artists of our time at the prestigious Rheingau Musik Festival: Chilly Gonzales, the fierce musical polymath, Igor Levit, the courageous classical interpreter, and the epitome of lyrical, Malakoff Kowalski.

“Enya: A Treatise on Unguilty Pleasures” – review and reflection

It's been almost 9 months now, since the virus has turned the world upside down. Time, in which Chilly Gonzales birthed a song with Gary Barlow called "Oh What a Day" (alongside Barry Manilow on the same album), recorded a Christmas album and wrote a book about Enya. Some people would call every single element of each "bad taste" initially. Why? Because what we wear, like and listen to is a form of social demarcation. Take the typical hipster as an example: "somebody trying too hard to be different by rejecting anything that is deemed popular. […] hipsters aren’t actually different at all, they’re just people that are snobbier and more annoying about their taste in 'alternative' things, which are all popular now thanks to the other hipsters." (Urban Dictionary) The hipster is the extreme representation of a trap we fall prey to in different forms when we transition from innocent, uninfluenced children to beings who have learned about effect, reaction and manipulation. In an attempt to be cool, more distinct and outclass others, we deny things we actually love, and intellectually adopt what we think we should like. We foster those well-groomed pets in the rational chamber of our brains and cage the wild spirits that once lived in our souls and nurtured our emotions in the forbidden "guilt box". The book is a plea to rerelease our authentic, pre-adolescent, guilt-free selves – or rather that's the afflatus I draw from it.

For most of us, hard work achieves short-term goals that will likely be consumed and seen by a few people — ourselves, co-workers, friends, and so on. Even people whose work is seen by millions of people know that change is relatively constant; web designs that work today will be overrun in a few months, and authors can publish second editions. Imagine you had only one shot to create something to be consumed by millions of people.

Summers in Canada are never long enough; nature seems to be able to “cram in” a year of growth in a few short months and we end up trying to do the same for trips to the beach and cottage, and all manner of work that has to take place outdoors. Taking a break from work or school always seems to provide a “tangential” inspiration for a new approach to a problem, or even coming up with entirely new ideas. This year, the end of summer also means that Gonz’s “radical sabbatical” is about 3/5 of the way through, but with his new Apple Beats One show (Music’s Cool with Chilly Gonzales) it appears that he hasn’t completely stepped away from public view. When we read that Gonz will be participating in the Red Bull Concert Academy in Montreal (with a special “Gonzervatoire Masterclass Concert” on October 26th)

Almost 17 years ago, Gonzales made his now-historic move from Toronto to Berlin in an effort to find an audience that aligned with his musical sensibilities. In many ways, Berlin became the spiritual birthplace of Chilly Gonzales – a persona that Gonzales imagined was “…a role model to some person that I’ve always wanted to be: my futuristic hero.” In the late 90s, Berlin was musically unique: a place where no one questioned the ‘ownership’ of hip-hop, which seamlessly blended in with other pop music, in sharp contrast to hip-hop’s then untouchable status in North America. Gonzales appeared to use his obscurity in Berlin to his advantage; honing and fine-tuning his image and message in Berlin spaces such as Galerie Berlintokyo. Recently, Gonzales announced his return to Berlin in conjunction with his musical friend and collaborator Boys Noize (Alex Ridha) for their very first live Octave Minds performance.

Clad in an elegant red robe and ‘formal’ dark slippers, Chilly Gonzales recently made one of his more surprising appearances during the opening ceremonies of the 2015 Pan American games in Toronto. The Pan Am games is a sporting event held every four years that brings together the best athletes from North and South America in friendly western-hemisphere competition, akin to a smaller version of the Olympic Games. The organizers of the opening events ceremony obviously wanted an iconic Canadian musician to provide an emotional response, possibly akin to Céline Dion and David Foster’s performance in the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games – but with far more subtlety. The exposure and publicity from his performance has definitely helped to raise Gonzales’ profile in his native Canada, largely through people discussing, “The guy wearing the robe and slippers playing the piano.” It’s worthwhile to have a closer look at Gonzales’ performance, since everything from appearance to song selection made for a memorable Toronto evening.

Persistence, instincts, go the distance, prove my existence – Chilly Gonzales

Being a ‘man of his time’ is likely no easy feat for Gonzales – it must take a great deal of talent and planning to continually wow fans with release after release of incredible music. Nowhere but in the musical arena can artists reach soaring level of fame one day, then be brought back down to Earth the next. Some entertainers, such as Gonzales, have evaded the pitfalls of the industry by providing novel music and themes year after year. We decided to have a closer look at what it takes to stay relevant in the industry and have a guess as to what Gonzales has planned next.

It’s almost Valentine’s Day (or Saint Valentin), and Gonzales is showing his fans some love through a Chambers pre-sale on his website along with an instantly downloadable track off the album. Also new in the store are two music boxes: a hand-crank box that plays Solitare, plus a wind-up version that’s available as part of a Vinyl and CD package. Gonzales has also released the full track listing for the album within the images on his store. Finally, he’s offering a webstore exclusive bonus track that will not be available anywhere else: (Not) A Musical Genius. The album artwork extends what we saw in the teaser trailer:

January was an exciting month for Gonzales fans: music analysis videos, interviews and features, new album announcement, song and album previews, live performances and much more. We were waiting for the news to slow down a bit to summarize, but new videos and songs just kept on coming. The upcoming “Chambers” was obviously the biggest news, but while we thought we’d hear 1 or 2 songs from “Chambers” before it was released, the BBC played practically a new song per night all week. Although we touch on the beauty of the new songs, we’ll definitely post a full write-up for Chambers once it’s officially released.

Big news today: Gonzales announces a new album called “CHAMBERS”, set for release sometime in 2015!

If you are on Gonzales’ official email distribution list (and why wouldn’t you be?), you may have noticed a snippet of text that went along with the streaming cancellation notice:

“…we have a great surprise in store for you in January”

Then, on January 6th Gonzales responded to a comment on Twitter with the following: