“Fuck Wagner” can easily be mistaken for just another provocative song. It is provocative. Thought-provoking. It addresses nothing less than a question almost as old as time: Do art and artist form a firm unity, or can they be separated? And there’s more to it than meets the eye, especially when it comes to Wagner, one of Germany’s most treasured antisemites, the pompous composer, who has been religiously admired by Hitler and some of today’s cultural elites alike. 

It took me one year to write about this album. When "A Very Chilly Christmas" came out, I was simply too overwhelmed with emotions. When I say I love Christmas music, don't imagine an American tourist accent, but rather an R'n'B type timbre. 9 years ago, Andrew and I (together we are "SoloGonzales") compiled a wish list of favourite things from our favourite artist. One of them said "A Christmas album". So when he actually did it, its beauty blew me away – and the fact that Gonz saved Christmas (music).

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.

Chilly Gonzales and his long-time director Jonathan Barré have created one of the most compelling Gonzales videos to-date: (Not) A Musical Genius. At first view, the video is funny and touching: a young pre-Gonzales Gonzales has a crush on his piano teacher, who turns out to have a boyfriend. This unrequited love motivates Gonzales to form a new persona – one that will win the hearts and minds of an audience. On repeated views, there are a multitude of symbolic elements that seem to underscore a much deeper message, which we will explore in-depth.

It’s been a hectic day. You’ve finally managed to squeeze into a seat on the train ride home, and press ‘shuffle’ to let the digital gods decide you musical fate. As you stare out the window, your head is filled with the unmistakable first few notes of “Othello”. Instantly, all other sounds disappear and it’s just you and Gonzales’ piano – his music conjuring some fantastic mental images and emotions as the velocity of the train slows down imperceptibly. Great music connects the auditory, visual, and emotional centres of our brain, and Gonzales has refined his craft to create a ‘perfect storm’ of all three. Gonzales is a master sculptor: his medium is sound, and he uses his piano as a tool to chisel away layers to uncover beautiful and unique sculptures that exist within all of us.

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.

There’s an obvious, but almost always overlooked aspect of classical music: nearly all classical musicians are, essentially, a cover band in the sense that they are simply re-interpreting music that someone else wrote. Most listeners don’t have the training and experience to hear a Chopin Etude and say whether it’s Pollini or Lang Lang playing (interpreting). The vast majority of classical musicians have never published a single original composition. Even Glenn Gould, with all his performance and interpretive brilliance, never published a ‘hit’ – just a few mildly interesting pieces in his youth.

People in technology and business circles like to talk about ‘disruptive innovators’; people, companies, or products that subvert existing products and markets using new and innovative techniques. One of the most visible disruptors is the popularization of downloadable media: photographs, videos, books and music (which has recently surpassed sales of physical music). Eventually, some disruptors become mainstream, and everyone can enjoy the benefits of innovation – at least until the next disruptive cycle starts up. New innovations generally come from people outside the ‘accepted’ circle, since corporations have typically have no inclination to spend money on change if it isn’t forced (although that notion is changing slowly). In Canada, Gonzales may have started out following a well-worn path for musicians by signing his band Son to Warner, but he quickly saw the downsides of corporate ‘ownership’ and decided to make his career work outside of the system.