Fans of Chilly Gonzales have impeccable taste (obviously), and always seem up for a challenge, so we at SoloGonzales decided to create a series of Gonz-themed crossword puzzles that combine Gonzales history, songs, musical knowledge, and just about anything else related to Gonzales.

It would appear that the most successful and prolific authors, filmmakers, and musicians have all been able to master one key aspect within their respective fields of expertise: the mastery of emotions. Their ability to make people fearful, cheerful, inspired, melancholy, and so on, reflects years of experience, trial-and-error, or (in some cases) sheer luck. Authors and filmmakers have the advantage of using or creating emotional states though mental or physical images – no easy feat unto itself, but certainly much easier than evoking the same emotional power without using any words or mental images at all.

In our previous post, we took a close look at half the tracks on Chilly Gonzales’ summer Mixtape – Classical Selections Vol. 1: Piano Music. In Part II, we analyze the rest. The complete mixtape is available here.

By examining the track selections in greater detail, we hope to uncover some of the reasons why Gonzales selected those particular tracks and composers for inclusion in his mixtape.

Mixtapes are a great way of expressing a love for music and at the same time, allowing people to peer into the type of music that drives and inspires entertainers, such as Chilly Gonzales. When Gonzales released Vol.1 of a 3-volume set of classical selections, we weren’t disappointed. Although the set does come with a tracklist, we felt like there was a back-story to the selections that was missing – why these artists, and why these songs? We set out to analyze each track to try and find the elements that Gonzales finds appealing.

This month we celebrate Chilly Gonzales’ World Record breaking performance 4 years ago, when he beat his inner self, played the piano for 27 hours, 3 minutes and 44 seconds and entered the Guinness Book of World Records. In honour of this occasion, we give you an insight into our archives and show you a collection of photos that I took during the event. They may not be examples of great photographic art, but they visualise the special atmosphere and eternalise a concert that wasn’t only legendary because of its length, but because of the inspiration and tacit message it spread.

Chilly Gonzales is on everyone’s and especially the cyberpeople’s lips at the moment – thanks to two guys in robot costumes. So it didn’t come as a surprise that prior to his two London concerts last week, Cadogan Hall was filled with whisperings, if he would at least partly play his song from the forthcoming Daft Punk album. He did. And everyone with a Beethoven-esque brain could actually even hear it – with their mind’s ear. Since he only let his fingers silently touch the keys, which was visible for everyone via the giant screens under the rededicated church’s ceiling and stretching from one side of the stage to the other.

It’s a veritable Gonz-festival at the Canadian iTunes store! Here are the current (Dec 18, 2012) Gonzales chart positions:

Classical
Solo Piano II: #1 album
Solo Piano: #11 album
Othello: #3 song

Jazz
Solo Piano II: #1 album

Recently, a considerable amount of interest was generated when it was revealed that musician, and sometimes piano-battler Andrew W.K. was being ‘groomed’ as U.S. Ambassador to Bahrain.

One of the unique features of SoloGonzales is the interactive Twitter graphs. They aren’t displayed on the front page due to space limitations, but can conveniently be found under the “Tweets->Twitter Social Network” menu item. If you haven’t used the Twitter graph feature before, here’s an overview.

Many of the video interviews you can find online have something in common: a mediocre to bad interviewer. That is certainly not due to Chilly Gonzales’ intimidating personality, on the contrary, but because they freeze with respect for his seemingly temperamental and experiment-loving stage persona.