Room 29 Jarvis Cocker & Chilly Gonzales

• 1Room 2903:35
• 2Marmont Overture02:42
• 3Tearjerker03:04
• 4Interlude 1 - Hotel Stationery01:22
• 5Clara02:59
• 6Bombshell04:36
• 7Belle Boy03:03
• 8Howard Hughes Under The Microscope03:20
• 9Salomé02:55
• 10Interlude 2 - 5 Hours A Day01:14
• 11Daddy, You're Not Watching Me02:10
• 12The Other Side03:44
• 13The Tearjerker Returns03:33
• 14A Trick Of The Light07:22
• 15Room 29 (Reprise)02:11
• 16Ice Cream As Main Course02:51
• Total Runtime50:41

Info for Room 29

Standing at the west end of Hollywood’s Sunset Boulevard, the Chateau Marmont hotel has seen many a famous and infamous guest pass through its doors since it opened in 1929. A 2012 stay in one of its second-floor rooms inspired British lyricist and singer Jarvis Cocker to look into its history and led to this collaborative project with multi-faceted Canadian pianist and composer Chilly Gonzales. Room 29, a 21st-century song cycle, is set for release on Deutsche Grammophon/Universal Music Canada, the country’s leading music company, on 17 March. Gonzales’ score and Cocker’s lyrics conjure up the lives of some of Room 29’s previous occupants, as well as shining a light on the glittering fantasy and often bleak reality of Hollywood.

“If you must get in trouble, do it at the Chateau Marmont,” noted Harry Cohn, founder of Columbia Pictures, in 1939. Jarvis Cocker was intrigued by the hotel’s links to the history of the film industry. He found the key to creativity in the fact that Room 29 contained a baby-grand piano. What if it could “sing” of the life stories and events it had witnessed? The idea also ignited Chilly Gonzales’s imagination, and both artists embarked on a three-year journey of artistic discovery, unearthing details about guests such as Jean Harlow, Mark Twain’s daughter Clara, and Los Angeles mobster Meyer Cohen, alias “Mickey the Haberdasher”. As well as dramatizing some of those stories, their songs capture both the essential loneliness of the hotel room and the ways in which moving images have “moved” people in ways they don’t quite understand. Gonzales and Cocker have drawn on the 19th-century model of the song cycle for a structure capable of containing the broad sweep of emotions and states of mind elicited by the real and imaginary dramas of one unusual hotel suite. Room 29 emerges as metaphor for a place within each of us, home to our deepest desires and fantasies.

Since moving to Germany in the late 1990s, Chilly Gonzales has pursued a breathtaking range of musical projects, spanning everything from rap and experimental rock to hip hop and Satie-inspired minimalism. The classically trained pianist collaborated with the Kaiser Quartett on his last solo album, Chambers, attracting critical acclaim to its neo-Romantic reflections on chamber music in the age of pop. The Hamburg-based string quartet plays a prominent part in Room 29, providing a sonorous tonal complement to Gonzales’ piano writing and accompanying Jarvis Cocker’s vocals. Lead singer and primary lyricist of Pulp for over 30 years, on and off, Cocker has also released two solo albums, and developed a successful broadcasting career, presenting both Jarvis Cocker’s Sunday Service on BBC Radio 6 Music and BBC Radio 4’s Wireless Nights.

Room 29 was recorded in Paris following its “work-in-progress” premiere at Hamburg’s Kampnagel in January last year. The finished piece will return to Kampnagel for three performances (17-19 March) before touring to London’s Barbican Centre (23-25 March), the Berlin Volksbühne (28-30 March), Paris (April/July) and selected summer festivals.

Jarvis Cocker, vocals
Chilly Gonzales, piano

Jarvis Cocker
is a short-sighted musician & broadcaster who was born in the north of England in the 20th century. He was lead singer with Pulp for 34 years. He has also released two solo albums. His lyric collection “Mother, Brother, Lover” was published by Faber in 2011. Since 2009 he has presented the BBC 6Music programme “Jarvis Cocker’s Sunday Service”, as well as the award-winning BBC Radio 4 documentary series “Wireless Nights”. He has honorary doctorates from both Sheffield Hallam University & Central Saint Martin’s School of Art (which he attended 1988-91). He lives in Paris & London.

Chilly Gonzales
Canadian pianist and entertainer, returns with his much anticipated follow-up to Solo Piano II: "Chambers".

Since the release of Solo Piano II, Chilly Gonzales composed the best- selling book of easy piano pieces Re-Introduction Etudes, produced and released Octave Minds, the piano-meets-electronica album with Boys Noize - and most importantly devoted himself to finding a modern take on chamber music. The result is "Chambers", an album for piano and string quartet (and a few surprises along the way). Inspired by the deepening relationship with Hamburg's Kaiser Quartett, the album re-imagines Romantic-era chamber music as today's addictive pop. Gestures from rap, ambient, easy listening and the avant-garde co-exist as always in Chilly Gonzales’ musical universe - this time with strings attached.

Known equally for his intimate piano touch as for his showmanship, "Gonzo" aims to be a man of his time, approaching the piano with classical and jazz training but with the attitude of a rapper.

Chilly Gonzales holds the Guinness world record for the longest solo concert at over 27 hours. He performs and writes songs with Jarvis Cocker, Feist and Drake, among others. In 2014 he won a Grammy for his collaboration on Daft Punk’s Best Album of the Year. With "Never Stop," Chilly Gonzales composed a global hit for the inaugural Apple iPad campaign.

Booklet for Room 29