Chilly Gonzales

Multi-talented composer, musician, rapper, Guinness World Record holder and Grammy Award winner Chilly Gonzales was born Jason Beck in Montreal, Quebec, Canada on March 20, 1972. His talents are so wide ranging that attempts to apply a genre to his music are futile. As a performer he effortlessly straddles the world of pop, rock, classical, and many other genres of music in between. He is an accomplished pianist, producer, composer, rapper, and singer and somehow manages to combine these roles with his other activities as a screenwriter and actor. Beck comes from a musical family (his brother Christophe is a well-respected film score composer) and studied classical music and piano at Canada's McGill University. He began his musical career with the alternative rock band Son and the band's debut album, Thriller (1995), was moderately successful. After the release of Son’s second album, Wolfstein (1997), Jason Beck was disappointed with the way his musical career was progressing in Canada. After Son’s split, he relocated to Berlin, Germany and re-invented himself as an experimental pop artist, declared himself president of the Berlin Underground movement and adopted the stage name Gonzales, eventually settling on Chilly Gonzales. His career began to take off and his single “Let's Groove Again” (1999) became a dance floor hit in Europe. Since those early days, his career has taken off in many different directions. He is probably best known for his classical piano albums but he has released numerous titles over the years including Gonzales Über Alles (2000), Soft Power (2008), Ivory Tower (2010), The Unspeakable Chilly Gonzalez (2011), Octave Minds with Boys Noize (2014), Room 29 with Jarvis Cocker (2017) and several remix albums. In 2018, he released details of his music school The Gonzervatory in Paris where students can sign up to receive one-to-one tuition with the man himself. He released the holiday-themed album A Very Chilly Christmas in 2020. Chilly Gonzalez issued the album Consumed in Key with Plastikman (2022), followed a year later by French Kiss (2023), which featured guest appearances from Bonnie Banana, Teki Latex, Christine Ott, Richard Clayderman, Juliette Armanet, and others. On May 18, 2009, Chilly Gonzales set a Guinness World Record for the longest solo artist performance, playing over 300 songs for 27 hours, 3 minutes, and 44 seconds. Chilly Gonzalez won a Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 2014 for his work on Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories.

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