Myra Ellen “Tori” Amos (born August 22, 1963) is an American singer-songwriter and pianist. She is a classically trained musician with a mezzo-soprano vocal range. Having already begun composing instrumental pieces on piano, Amos won a full scholarship to the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University at the age of five, the youngest person ever to have been admitted. She was expelled at the age of 11 for what Rolling Stone described as “musical insubordination“. Amos was the lead singer of the short-lived 1980s pop group Y Kant Tori Read before achieving her breakthrough as a solo artist in the early 1990s. Her songs focus on a broad range of topics, including sexuality, feminism, politics, and religion.
Discography: 15 studio albums, from 1992 – 2017
One thing to share:
When she was two years old, her family moved to Baltimore, Maryland, where her father had transplanted his Methodist ministry from its original base in Washington, D.C. Her older brother and sister took piano lessons, but Tori did not need them. From the time she could reach the piano, she taught herself to play: when she was two, she could reproduce pieces of music she had only heard once, and, by the age of three, she was composing her own songs. She has described seeing music as structures of light since early childhood, an experience consistent with chromesthesia:
The song appears as light filament once I’ve cracked it. As long as I’ve been doing this, which is more than thirty-five years, I’ve never seen the same light creature in my life. Obviously similar chord progressions follow similar light patterns, but try to imagine the best kaleidoscope ever—after the initial excitement, you start to focus on each element’s stunning original detail. For instance, the sound of the words with the sound of the chord progression combined with the rhythm manifests itself in a unique expression of the architecture of color-and-light. … I started visiting this world when I was three, listening to a piece by Béla Bartók; I visited a configuration that day that wasn’t on this earth. … It was euphoric.
source: wikipedia
Love her 🤩
LikeLiked by 2 people
🙂
LikeLiked by 2 people
Ohh Tori. What a talent
LikeLiked by 1 person
I love the post you wrote on her and so couldn’t leave her out for 2021. You’ll see a few others you wrote about on my Women Music March 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
This is exciting. Your Tori and Plant recommendation has inspired my upcoming Led Zeppelin week.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh so cool. Can’t wait to read it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
she’s a great artist! I love a lot of her music!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Glad you like her, Carol anne. I don’t know her that well but hope to get to know her better. What’s your favorite album of hers?
LikeLike
She is talented…I like the fact she writes her own songs.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sounds like Tori Amos who I only know by name is truly gifted. And that her apparently narrow-minded teachers couldn’t deal with it, dismissing her for “musical insubordination.”
I wonder how her super-duper teachers felt when Tori went on to become a famous artists while they remained “nobodies”.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes, I wonder how many teachers who tried to squelch creative felt later? I don’t know a lot about her but what I’ve heard is really good.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I have mixed feelings about Tori. She’s done both wonderful and awful music I think. But thats so interesting about the way she sees it. Truly a gift–I’m envious. (K)
LikeLiked by 1 person
I haven’t heard a lot of her stuff. Do you have any recommendations of ones to try first? I know that Steve for the Deaf wrote on the album this song came from and I listened to it and liked it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I like Scarlett’s Walk a lot. A Sorta Fairytale is a great song.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Scarlett’s Walk has just been borrowed 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Great! I think you’ll enjoy it.
LikeLiked by 1 person