If you’re familiar with the name Chilly Gonzales, it might be through the pianist’s collaboration with Jarvis Cocker, Room 29, performed at 2017’s International Festival. Many folk in Edinburgh’s Usher Hall on Sunday were enthusiastically familiar with the man, and he and his three-piece band were greeted with warm applause on entering.
The man strikes an unusual figure, clothed in dressing-gown and slippers, but from the off his assertive charisma is undeniable, with a cleverly funny autobiographical introductory song explaining his and his alter-ego’s journey to his current ‘incarnation’, Gonzo – the eponymous title of an album of songs due out next month. It’s the first UK airing of this show, and he admits to its being still open to fine-tuning, but in truth it seemed as polished as it’s possible to be.
From Ontario, originally Jason Beck, classically-trained and possessed of sparkling keyboard talents, Gonzales has also collaborated with fellow Canadians Feist and Drake, and French electronic duo Daft Punk. This is his third Edinburgh outing, and his repartee is made the more endearing, at least to Scots, when he refers to the shared Canadian-Scottish experience of living next-door to an agenda-setting, attention-grabbing neighbour, to hoots of appreciation from many in the audience. (Though I’m not sure if visitors from outwith Scotland quite grasp this, and it put me in mind of Canadian comedy band Moxy Frouvus making the same point many years ago at an Edinburgh show, to what must have been a largely non-scottish audience, and getting only a few appreciative laughs.)
Super-entertaining throughout, Gonzo/Gonzales can be intimate and delicate on the piano (a Piano album trilogy showcases his undeniable talents), then building to dizzying heights with staggering displays of dextrous thunder – the biggest hammering of the instrument it’s possible to see since Jerry Lewis. Salvos of hemi-demi-semiquavers flying up and down the keys, where his flair as a showman meets jaw-dropping virtuosity. With a natural flair for comedy, his patter in-between is sardonic, acerbic and frequently hilarious, taking aim at modern-day targets such as the algorithmic Spotify playlist, and the continued reverence in Germany for the brazenly anti-semitic Richard Wagner; this is given full vent in a solo timpani piece, as, sinisterly lit from below, he rails against the almighty operatic composer’s racist public stance.
This outspoken approach is one aspect of Gonzales’ character, and it’s balanced by quieter pieces which were delicate and spacious, at times infused with an open, literate, Satie-like calm, and the band (bass guitar, viola and percussion) introduced to build on the keening, expansive, louder sections, which could expand to extraordinary volume. This excitement reached its final apogee as Gonzales made his way out into the stalls, with everyone standing, and delivered a rap from atop an audience-member’s chair: not easy given that the Usher Hall’s chairs and armrests fold and pivot, but such was his booming confidence by that point, we believed the man could surmount pretty much anything, really.
