English
Tori Amos is one of the most influential singers of the 90s, and she´s back in Italy on tour presenting her new album ´Night of Hunters´, released in May of this year.
She´s one of the most eccentric characters in the world of pre-Lady Gaga pop music, but also a singer of great talent and many instrumental capacities. Her piano, who has been with her since the age of 3, has always been her biggest expressive weapon. Since she was little, at the age of 5, she became famous in the musical scene of her city (Rockville, Maryland), when in 1968 she managed to get in the Peabody Music Consevatory, who accepted her with a full scholarship. She was the only student accepted there of the age of 5 in the whole history of this conservatory but, a few years later, her scholarship was retracted and Tori Amos was expelled of the school for her “subversive” attitude: she liked rock (at 11 years old she sung Led Zeppelin songs and this was unconceivable in such a strict school). Also, her way of playing was always more instinctive rather than controlled and following the rules and virtuosity. She hated the music sheets, hated discipline and this made her look heretic in her teacher´s eyes.
That´s how Tori Amos ended up playing in bars with help from her father, who managed to get her some shows and continuously sent demos of her songs to all record labels in the country, with a near-complete dedication and total faith in his daughter´s talent. He wasn´t wrong. It was on one of these occasions that Tori lived what probably became the worst memory of her life (which is in the song ´Me and a Gun´), when one of the regular clients in one of those bars came to talk to her and offered her a car ride home. This man, minutes later, threatened her with killing her if she didn´t satisfy his sexual needs. This violent episode was very hard for Amos but, thanks to her strength and her passion, she managed to turn it into art.
Among her most important songs we find ´Little Earthquakes´ (form her first album released in 1991), ´Under the Pink´ (which established her name on the market a few years later), the interesting project ´Boys for Pele´, recorded live in an Irish church, ´From the Choir Girl Hotel´ (where she began to experiment with electronic influences), the obscure ´To Venus and Back´, ´Abnormally attracted to sin´ and lastly ´Nights of Hunters´.
This album, dedicated to classical music, proposes a cycle of 21st century songs which are inspired in the music of the last four hundred years. Amos loves the stories and here she proposes a complex emotive story: the protagonist, a women who is among the ruins of a relationship, goes through an ´initiation´ one night which allows her to re-invent herself once again, like a phoenix.
menschauser
Don´t miss out on this concert! We recommend that you rent apartments in Rome and come to enjoy this show, on the 8th of October in the Auditorium Parco della Musica.
Translated by: aleixgwilliam
