Perez Hilton Interview (September 27, 2011)

And quite a few actors have gone to [the Sylvia Young Theatre School] that are in British television. So she Tash really wanted to do this. And I said, Mark and I talked about it with her. I mean, she wanted to go to Hogwarts. But this is like a version of Hogwarts.

As we alluded to last week, Perez Hilton got the opportunity to sit down and chat with Tori and he’s posted the first part of their conversation today.

He’s also posted a partial transcript (which we unashamedly reproduce below the fold).

Look for part two to surface on Wednesday!

Thanks to Devin for the tip!

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Mapping More Music!

Map The Music, a documentary film about music and the importance of live music to the people who love it, will be broadcast on The Documentary Channel on November 24th! Tori is one of several artists featured in the film, along with Imogen Heap, Cary Brothers, Kate Havnevik, Zoe Keating, Guy Sigsworth of Frou Frou, Rachael Yamagata, and Charlotte Martin.

While we’ve mentioned the film before, if you would like to read more about the film and its creator Samantha Hale who, as it so happens, is also a devoted Toriphile, we recommend that you head on over to Peter Zimmerman’s feature article in Glide which takes a deep and long look at the film and its subject matter.

Check out the “Welcome to Amsterdam” clip Samantha put together for a Tori-colorded taste of what Map The Music is like:

Russia Gears Up For Night of Hunters

OpenSpace.ru, a popular arts and culture website in Russia, has fingered Tori’s upcoming shows in St. Petersburg and Moscow as some of the top musical events of the week.

For those of you without Cyrillic in your bag of tricks, ravi has kindly offered up a translation:

Kate Bush of the Generation X is coming back to Moscow with the new album Night of Hunters released on a label that specializes in classical music. This record is unusual in that the album format is currently unpopular – at its core, the record is poems sung to the accompaniment of piano, string quartet and a clarinet. Amos always considered herself more of a conceptual artist than a pop-star. Some of the songs on Night of Hunters are performed by Amos together with her 11 year-old daughter and niece – i’m curious if they will appear on stage. -Alexander Velikanov

The Voice of Russia, on the other hand, offers their content in a variety of languages and in their short piece on the two Russian stops ont he Night of Hunters tour notes that a 900 kilogram piano tends to result in excess baggage fees…

Thanks to ravi for the link and the words!

The Daily Interview (September 26, 2011)

Don’t you think there was a time, what, in the ’20s, when the idea of art being challenging was what art was? And now, so much of it, you’ve heard it once, and you’ll say to yourself, ‘Oh, hang on a minute, that’s just like another song that I heard on the radio two hours ago, which is just like another song I heard last week …’ There is, right now, not an encouragement from those that are setting the trends — I’m not talking about the artists, I’m talking about labels, even the radio. They’re not always supportive of challenging the masses. I think sometimes they fear that, because what if the masses wake up and decide that they don’t need all these institutions and corporations and can’t be led by them because they’re thinking for themselves?

The Daily has a unique article on Tori, up today, in which they interviewed her and took some stunning photos in a Manhattan warehouse which has turned into the interactive set of the New York production of “Sleep No More.” Writer Rich Juzwiak ruminates on the new album, Tori’s history as a musician, her propensity for the impenetrable, and her ability to be down-to-earth at the same time.

EDIT: Check out additional images from the photo shoot by Victoria Will here. Thanks, Mario!

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The Opera News Interview (September 26, 2011)

I would watch Tash [her eleven-year-old daughter, Natashya, who sings on the album] — just how she communicates with nature. And she sings. She’s in a trance and dances her dances around the water. And I kind of looked and I thought, “Children have this incredible sort of connection with nature, where they don’t ask questions about it. It’s just alive and real in them, and they’re not outside of it looking at it, but they’re inside of it experiencing it.” So I thought, for her to play Anabelle, the shape-shifting fox-goose, the hunter and the hunted, who is really duality, I thought that’s when nature could come alive and speak.

Tori recently chatted with Oussama Zahr of Opera News about Night of Hunters and her classical roots. In it, she even considers whether to accept an invitation to speak to students at her alma mater, the Peabody Conservatory. Click over there to see the full interview. Thanks to Oussama and Joe for letting us know about this one!

The Wild Hunt Asks: Is Tori Pagan?

At The Wild Hunt, a widely read blog on pagan news and ideas, writer Jason Pitzl-Waters reviews Night of Hunters and discusses the pagan themes on the album. In it, he examines whether it confirms Tori as a pagan herself. Although Pitzl-Waters doesn’t reach any conclusions, he does say, “I personally think that labels like ‘Pagan’ probably matter little to Tori Amos, and that anyone who walks so deeply into faerie is ‘with us’ in all the ways that truly matter without having to pin it down.”

Thanks to Celine for the link!

Connecting With Tori on KCSN

Tori’s appearance on Nic Harcourt’s KCSN radio program Connections is now available for streaming from the program’s website. Click on the “2011-09-24” button on the right of the player there and the three-hour show should start streaming. Nic kicked off the show by playing “Carry” from the album but the actual in-studio interview and performance takes up the last half-hour of the program.

The session included performances of “Edge of the Moon,” “Nautical Twilight,” “Cloud on my Tongue,” and “Carry.” The balance of the half-hour was spent in discussion with Nic about Night of Hunters, from its start as a commission by Deustche Grammaphon to the inspiration for the story that makes up the narrative of the album to the incorporation of Ireland into the story. She also gives some details about the narrative that hadn’t surfaced in other interviews so far.

Definitely worth a listen!

The Guardian's Music Weekly Welcomes Tori

Tori is the guest on this week’s episode of Music Weekly, The Guardian’s cleverly-titled weekly music podcast. During Tori’s conversation with Alex Macpherson, who recently reviewed Night of Hunters for The Guardian, they discuss the new record, her incorporation of mythology into the album’s story and the challenges of working within the structures of classical music.

You can stream the entire program from The Guardian’s website, download a mp3 or pick up a copy of the program from iTunes, so there’s no excuse for not giving this a listen!

The Independent Interview (September 23, 2011)

Mark [Hawley] said, “Jesus, wife! The press will have us divorced after the first week’s promo!” but the truth is I’m crazy about him. We’ve weathered a lot of storms and outside forces, but we’ve been together 16 years.

One recent Sunday morning, James McNair of The Independent sat down with Tori for a chat about Night of Hunters and their conversation made it to the September 23rd edition of that UK newspaper. Tori tackles the common question about the state of her marriage in light of the album’s topic, but also discusses working with family on the record, goes into more depth than usual about the inspiration for the song “Battle of Trees” and looks back at the 1994 Q magazine cover she shared with Bjork and PJ Harvey.

Thanks to mode for the link!

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The Star Ledger Reviews Night of Hunters

We’ve been a little hesitant to flood Undented’s front page with all the reviews of Night of Hunters that are popping up — and there are many — but this one from The Star-Ledger caught our eye. In it, classical music critic Ronni Reich and pop music critic Tris McCall have a dialogue about the record, giving a little more perspective and insight into the album that many reviews might reveal…

P.S. We have been posting links to any and all reviews over on our Twitter stream (which we really should export to the sidebar of the site one of these days) so if you’ve been itching to read more critiques of the record, head on over there for that deluge.

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