1999
Gonzo moves to Berlin
BERLIN … where it all began…
Let’s Groove again (Single)
kitty-yo single “Let’s Groove Again” became an immediate dancefloor hit upon its 1999 release
2000
The Entertainist
Hip hop mode. Collaborations by Peaches, Digital Hardcore chaps Bomb 20, Patric Catani and Paul PM
Über Alles
2002
Presidential Suite
« The great Gonzo’s first pop album, a record of such sparkling joy that it makes that S Club Juniors single look like one of Thom Yorke’s suicide poems. Gonzo fans will be aware of his repertoire since European electro whimsy, piano and balladry were all stirred and twisted on his full length debut « Über Alles », while digital hardcore, hip-hop, mop-styled craziness and snoop-derived rhyme patterns were all fucked up on the classic follow up ‘The Entertainist’. And here, as was hoped, the two meet » www.playlouder.com
2003
“Z”
‘Z’ is a mutated « Best of » : Chilly Gonzales covering Chilly Gonzales by re-recording his own songs from scratch in new styles, with new guests and with all new vocals and music. Guests Feist, Peaches, Paul PM, Taylor Savvy, Louie Austen and Princess Superstar
The Berlin Hipster Years
Self Declared President of the Berlin Underground
Daft Punk, Björk, Placebo and Chet Baker solo piano “remakes”
David Bowie’s Meltdown festival
Iggy Pop’s “Motor Inn”
2004
SOLO PIANO
16 piano themes for left hand accompaniment and right hand melody.
125 000 fans love this record
Let It Die (Feist), co-produced by Gonzo, 500 000 copies
Let It Die was welcomed as one of the best Canadian pop albums of 2004, and collected three Juno Award nominations in 2005 —winning Best Alternative Album and Best New Artist. Let It Die was nominated once again in the 2006 Juno Awards; this time for “Inside and Out” as Single of the Year.
2006
From Major To Minor
Double DVD, directed by Ninja Pleasure, with the surrealist “Master Class” by Professor Gonzales, teaching music theory to real students taken from the audience as well as his friends, featuring Jamie Lidell & Feist on “Melody” and Daft Punk on “Rhythm”, the “White Gloves Concert” featuring Jamie Lidell, Mocky and Feist performing each others’ songs, followed by Chilly Gonzales concert footage, videos, television interviews and the Paris Nuits Blanches
2007
The Reminder (Feist), co-produced by Gonzo
The Reminder won 3 Juno Awards in 2008 including Best Pop Album of the Year and Best Album of the Year. It was also nominated for 4 Grammys including Best Producer and Best Album at the 50th Grammy Awards.
1 500 000 copies have been sold
2008
Soft Power
The misunderstood masterpiece
2009
Gonzales breaks Guinness book’s world records for the longest solo concert
To fully satisfy the insatiable ambition of Gonzales, only one thing was left to do and he did it.
May 16–18, 2009 Gonzales broke the Guinness World Record for the longest solo concert… by playing 27 hours 3 minutes 44 seconds of piano, over 200 different songs, in a marathon concert at film director Claude Lelouch’s Ciné 13 Theatre in Paris.
A record 85 000 people from all over the world tuned in to the live webcast, that became the days n° 2 “twitter trend”.
2010
The Musical Inspiration of Pierre “Bande Originale” by Pierre Gagnaire et Chilly Gonzales
An offer to co-write a book of music inspired by recipes inspired by music, with Pierre Gagnaire, the 3 star chef and owner of London’s Sketch and Paris’ Le restaurant de Pierre Gagnaire.
The Hands of Serge Gainsbourg on the big screen “Gainsbourg, Vie héroïque”
In 2009 Gonzo accepted several of the more interesting offers that came his way in the wake of this new found fame. Offers to incarnate Serge Gainsbourg, to play his music for the soundtrack – and his hands for the screen – in the much anticipated first feature film of renowned comic book artist Johann Sfar.
Ivory Tower – The Movie
Ivory Tower is an existential sports comedy, a story of two brothers and their unhealthy rivalry over both the chessboard and a woman.
“Mention Speciale du Jury” Filmmakers of the Present Competition Locarno Internation Film Festival 2010
The film was co-written by Gonzo and French director and screenwriter Céline Sciamma. It stars a variety of Canadian-born musicians, including Gonzales himself, Peaches, Feist and Tiga.
Music by Chilly Gonzales and Boys Noize
Directed by Adam Traynor
Ivory Tower
“THE BEST PIANO-DRIVEN SLICE OF DISCO IN 10 YEARS” – ROUGH TRADE SHOPS
Apple’s world-wide IPAD2 campaign with the Ivory Tower single Never Stop
2011
Ivory Tower nominated at the JUNOs
Ivory Tower nominated in Canadian Music Award JUNOs’ BEST ELECTRONIC ALBUM category. Gonzo opens the broadcast in a duo with Drake
The Unspeakable Chilly Gonzales
“Come and listen to a jerk, talk about how hard he works
Come and be a flirt, I’m an expert, you can wipe off this smirk
Do you like rap ’cause it so happens, I’m so ballin’What I mean is between you and me there’s a gap, don’t fall in“
The Unspeakable Chilly Gonzales is the world’s first rap orchestra album.
2012
Solo Piano II reaches 100 000 Fans
Alone for 10 days in Paris’ Studio Pigalle, Chilly Gonzales recorded a handful of songs that had made the short list from a hundred or so melodies written over the eight years that had passed since the release of the now iconic Solo Piano.
2013
Drake, Feist, Daft Punk all call Chilly Gonzales to collaborate
2014
Grammy
Gonzo gets a Grammy: his piano finds itself WITHIN Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories 2013 Album of the Year.
Re-Introduction Etudes
Re-Introduction Etudes: a book of 24 easy-to-master, fun-to-play piano pieces specifically designed to unlock musical mysteries for those who gave it up. The unexpected sheet music hit of summer 2014 inspires 25 000 people to pick up the piano again.
Octave Minds
88 KEYS x 808 BEATS. Chilly Gonzales and Boys Noize collaborate on an ethereal piano meets electronica album that comes to life in the first ever concert at Teufelsberg in Berlin, the USA’s graffiti-laden cold war spy station
2015
Pop Music Masterclasses
Music pundits and fans worldwide turn to Gonzo as the musical scientist and great explainer of all things music theory: his web series of POP MUSIC MASTERCLASSES fires up the internet and he anchors documentaries on “Classical Connections” (BBC) and “The History of Music” (Arte).
Chambers
Chilly Gonzales re-imagines Romantic-era chamber music as today’s addictive pop in new album Chambers. Gestures from rap, ambient, easy listening and the avant-garde co- exist as always in Chilly Gonzales’ musical universe – this time with strings attached.
2016
Music’s Cool with Chilly Gonzales
Gonzo penns several newspaper and magazine opinion pieces and is called upon by the likes of BBC Radio 1 in the UK, 1Live in Germany, and the CBC in Canada to comment upon our ever- expanding musical universe. Apple Music’s Beats1 broadcasts radio show Music’s Cool with Chilly Gonzales in which Gonzo’s unique analysis introduces listeners the theory and the fun of entire musical genres through the work of one exemplary artist (Daft Punk for electronic music, Weezer for Indie Rock…) in a 2-hour monthly broadcast.
Room 29
Written with Jarvis Cocker, Room 29 is a song-cycle about a Chateau Marmont (LA) hotel room with a piano in it, the first album on Deutsche Grammophon with a “parental advisory” logo.
A year of Concerts and other Collaborations: Jarvis Cocker, Kaiser Quartett, Stella Le Page, Joe Flory, Ibeyi, Francesco Tristano, Daniel Hope, Toddla T, Leonard Cohen Tribute, Bugzy Malone and others…
2018-2019
The Gonzervatory
Gonzo makes a Call to Entry for his very own music school, a residential music performance workshop in Paris, Spring 2018 and Cologne, Fall 2019… 2022 is next. Six selected students win an all-expenses-paid trip for a week of intensive coaching, masterclasses and rehearsals, living together in musical immersion and culminating in public concerts led by Chilly Gonzales himself. Together they will explore Musical Humanism, audience psychology and what it means to be a performing musician in this day and age.
Solo Piano III
Chilly Gonzales completes the Solo Piano Trilogy. Like any final act, there are complications and consequences, followed by an urgent race to the finish line. Like its predecessors, it’s a mostly happy ending in C major, but there is more dissonance, tension and ambiguity along the way.
Shut Up and Play the Piano
Career retrospective documentary premieres in the Panorama Section at Berlin Film Festival. Using Gonzales’ extensive video archive in a rather unorthodox manner, Shut Up and Play the Piano explores his persona by interweaving newly shot interviews and concert scenes with fictional materials of totally different time periods. Reality and fiction blur together on a trip through Chilly Gonzales’ world.
2020
Enya: A Treatise on Unguilty Pleasures
His first book Enya: A Treatise on Unguilty Pleasures is published in October 2020. In dazzling, erudite prose Gonzales delves beyond her innumerable gold discs and millions of fans to excavate his own enthusiasm for Enya’s singular music as well as the mysterious musician herself, and along the way uncovers new truths about the nature of music, fame, success and the artistic endeavor. In this musical memoir, he asks: Does music have to be smart or does it just need to go straight to the heart?
A very chilly christmas
In Winter 2020, Chilly Gonzales releases A very chilly christmas, his very own Christmas Album. From feudal oldies to newer holiday pop canon, A very chilly christmas surveys a broad scope of seasonal repertoire and sentiment. There’s grandeur and solemnity, there’s austerity and merriment, and there’s Mariah Carey.
2021 – 2022
Consumed (In Key)
After hearing ‘Consumed’ for the first time shortly after the album’s 20th anniversary, Gonzo felt that the record’s loose use of melody and negative space threatened his musical sensibility. Furthermore, the album’s unique timing structure and flow fueled his curiosity and pushed him towards an idea of composing accompanying piano pieces (counterparts) for each of the tracks. It would not be a remix. It would be one composer instinctively reacting to – and finding space within – another composers already completed work. As an experiment, Gonzo completed a series of demos and later mentioned it to his friend Tiga, the Turbo Recordings label boss, who as a Plastikman & ‘Consumed’ fan urged Gonzo to continue and suggested that he reach out to Hawtin.
Consumed (In Key) is released on April 1st 2022 on Turbo Recordings.
2023
French Kiss
Since his track Smothered Mate was chosen as the soundtrack for the French national soccer team’s World Cup victory, Chilly Gonzales has gradually taken steps towards France. In 2023, his first album entirely written and composed in the language of Molière: FRENCH KISS.
To make this record, Chilly Gonzales befriended a new generation of French artists, mixing them with long-time friends and one of his heroes, to whom he cedes his place at the piano for the first time.
On the album, Bonnie Banane, Juliette Armanet, Christine Ott, Arielle Dombasle and Teki Latex rub shoulders, under the benevolent eye of Richard Clayderman… The velvety and acerbic cover is signed Fabcaro.
2024
Gonzo
After 12 years of instrumental albums, Chilly Gonzales has a lot to get off his chest.
The notebooks that sat unfilled since 2011’s orchestral rap opus “The Unspeakable Chilly Gonzales” started to fill up again in early 2022 after ending a lengthy decade of psychoanalysis. Coincidence? Hardly.
The songs reveal an ongoing tension between persuasion and confession, delusion and self-awareness and finally, gratitude.
But is this truly a rap album? Instrumental pieces such as the Stravinsky-esque “Fidelio” or the tearjerking “Eau de Cologne” will remind listeners of Gonzo’s extravagant “musical genius” persona, as the words and rhymes from previous verses settle into their ears.