The Quietus Interviews Tori

Well, there were songs that were considered but I didn’t even try. Something like ‘Cornflake Girl’ would lend itself for a big band approach, but if it were not that set-up, I didn’t think it would work because her roots are reggae.

Erin Lyndal Martin interviews Tori for The Quietus, talking about the song choices for Gold Dust as well as Tori’s collaborations with arranger John Phillip Shenale and Metropole Orkest conductor Jules Buckley. Click on over to check out the full Q&A.

Gramophone Interview (October 1, 2012)

The orchestra doesn’t wait for you. It’s like being on a train speeding at a hundred miles an hour – if you fall off, they can’t stop!

Sarah Kirkup spoke with Tori for the venerable classical music magazine Gramophone and the resulting article was posted on October 1st. In it, Tori discusses the making of Gold Dust, reworking songs for the record and performing with the Metropole. At the end of the piece, Gramophone has also included five songs from the record, with little quips about each from Tori.

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PopMatters Performer Spotlight: Day 2

The second day of PopMatters’ Performer Spotlight on Tori includes fours articles:

1. Cries and Whispers: How to Speak ‘Tori’ — Matt Mazur’s examination of Tori’s language and storytelling in her songs and lyrics.
2. The Tori Amos Canon – Part 2: Contemporary Classics — A look back at Little Earthquakes, Under The Pink, Boys For Pele, and From The Choirgirl Hotel, the four-album foundation of her career.
3. Tori Amos – Evolution of a Song: “Suede” — A history of the song “Suede,” from its origins on To Venus And Back to its most recent incarnation with the Apollon Musagète Quartett on the Night of Hunters tour.
4. The Best Tori Amos Non-Album Tracks — The PopMatters staff picks their ten favorite songs that never made it to one of Tori’s albums.

The Performer Spotlight continues through the end of the week — check back each day for more articles and interviews about our favorite redhead.

Tori Shines In The PopMatters Performer Spotlight

As foretold by the prophets countless years ago (or by us last week), Tori would be the subject of the next PopMatters’ Performer Spotlight and, lo! during the release week of Gold Dust, the predictions teased from the tea leaves in the dens of soothsayers and fortunetellers have come to pass!

But seriously, the PopMatters staff writers have teamed together to produce a week-long series of interviews, articles and essays to digging deep into Tori’s music, lyrics and body of work. The spotlight kicked off today with introductory comments by those who have worked with Tori over the years from Samuel Adamson to Eric Rosse, an examination of the characters in her songs, and an essay by Alex Ramon about archestype, image, and identity in Tori’s music. Heady stuff but all worth the investment of some undivided attention.

We’re looking forward to the rest of what the Spotlight has in store for us!

BBC Interview (September 29, 2012)

My attitude with classical music hasn’t been the problem. It’s been my attitude with the professors and teachers I think are completely out of touch with the emotion and spirit of the whole thing. It’s taken me a few years, and Deutsche Grammophon had to come knocking, before I opened up to it again.

Including another video clip from Tim Masters’ interview with Tori, BBC News & Entertainment has posted another article on Tori. This one deals with the origins and evolution of the project that became Gold Dust.

Unfortunately, the video clip can’t easily be embedded outside of the BBC site, so head on over to BBC’s site to view it — at least until someone rips it and posts it to YouTube!

Thanks to mkgtweety, Ethan, and Robin for letting us know about this!

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The Observer's This Much I Know (September 29, 2012)

I’d like to make music for the rest of my life. My daughter’s plan for me is that at 83 I’ll still be in heels, straddling two pianos. Fully clothed though – there’s a “no boob” rule these days.

Yesterday’s Observer included this cute article by Shahesta Shaitly (and lovely photograph by Suki Dhanda) in which Tori enumerates a number of observations on herself, life and music.

Thanks to AngieZ for the link!

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Washington Blade Interview (September 27, 2012)

The thing about a remix is you don’t have to retain the narrative or even the spirit of the original work in the same way. So the “Professional Widow” remix, for example, became a very different expression of the song from the original. Some of that narrative was there but not the way it was on the (album version). And yet the remix still clearly did its job. But in doing something like [Gold Dust], you don’t want to lose the song’s story or her narrative in any way, so it was important to really, and sometimes very subtly, make changes.

The Washington Blade’s Joey DiGuglielmo did a phoner with Tori and the resulting interview went up on The Blade’s website earlier this week. While hitting the usual questions about Gold Dust and The Light Princess, DiGuglielmo takes a slightly different slant and Tori’s responses shine a brighter light on her creative process, both for the new album an in general, than most of the other recent pieces.

Thanks to Jon for the pointer!

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The Line of Best Fit Interview (September 29, 2012)

This is a collaboration record, ok? They’re not just backing string-players. It’s Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Jules [the conductor Jules Buckley] is really my dance partner, though, because the orchestra is a creature, you know? They’re a dragon and he’s the brain of the dragon and I’m riding the dragon.

Tori sat down with The Line of Best Fit’s Doron Davidson-Vidavski and they ended up discussing each song on Gold Dust, including the iTunes bonus track “Maybe California.” In addition to addressing some of the questions lingering in the minds of fans about the record (the length of “Yes, Anastasia,” for example), she also drops the news that there will be dance remixes of some Gold Dust tracks coming in October.

Thanks to mkgtweety for the link!

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Huffington Post "Gold Dust" Interview

“Somebody said to me recently, ‘How can you sing Silent All These Years when you’re not silent anymore? And I said, ‘How do you know I’m not silent any more, about something that happened two weeks ago and I didn’t speak up like I should, or was intimidated to say something?’ Maybe there are things that I don’t speak up about, so that song can still be very current, even to me, but the pictures change.”

Tori recently chatted with Huffington Post writer Chris Wimpress in a lengthy interview on the new album, U.S. politics, and much more. Follow the jump to read the whole thing!

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Panning For Gold Dust

NME’s Lucy Jones chats with Tori about Gold Dust and a host of other topics but, perhaps most interestingly, offers up a full stream of the album. It’s for those in the UK only but we’re sure an album stream will be made available to other regions before too long…

Update: Gold Dust is now streaming via Paste magazine. Wheeee!

Update: Earlier this afternoon, the streaming widget on Paste’s site started having problems. Fortunately, the widget we snagged earlier today and embedded below (the one on the right) still works.