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| Tori Amos: Live in Atlanta, USA. |
Tori Amos (born August 22, 1963) is an American pianist, singer-songwriter, composer and record producer. She is a classically trained musician and possesses a mezzo-soprano vocal range. Instruments played : Piano, harpsichord, clavichord, Hammond organ, harmonium, Fender Rhodes, Wurlitzer, Kurzweil, clavinet, vocals. As of 2005, Amos had sold 12 million albums worldwide and has been nominated for several awards, including 8 Grammy Awards. Her third solo album, Boys for Pele, was released in January 1996. The album was recorded in an Irish church, in Delgany, County Wicklow, with Amos taking advantage of the church recording setting to create an album ripe with baroque influences, lending it a darker sound and style. She added harpsichord, harmonium, and clavichord to her keyboard repertoire, and also included such anomalies as a gospel choir, bagpipes, church bells, and drum programming.
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The album garnered mixed reviews upon its release, with some critics praising its intensity and uniqueness while others bemoaned its comparative impenetrability. Despite the album's erratic lyrical content and instrumentation, the latter of which kept it away from mainstream audiences, Boys for Pele is Amos's most successful simultaneous transatlantic release, reaching #2 on both the Billboard 200 and the UK Top 40 upon its release. Fueled by the desire to have her own recording studio to distance herself from record company executives, Amos had the barn of her home in Cornwall, England converted into a state-of-the-art recording studio, Martian Engineering Studios.Amos is the third child of Rev. Dr. Edison and Mary Ellen Amos and she was born at the Old Catawba Hospital in Newton, North Carolina, USA during a trip from their Georgetown home in Washington, D.C. Her maternal grandparents were of mixed European and Cherokee ancestry; of particular importance to her as a young child was her grandfather, Calvin Clinton Copeland, who was a great source of inspiration and guidance to her.
"Rattlesnakes"
Outside of music: In June 1994, Amos co-founded RAINN, The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, a toll-free help line in the US connecting callers with their local rape crisis center. Amos - herself a survivor of a sexual assault - was seen as unlocking the silence of her assault through her music; thus "Unlock the Silence" went on to become a year-long campaign for RAINN when Amos became a national spokesperson for the organization. By the summer of 2006, RAINN had received its one millionth caller and the organization's success has led to it ranking in "America's 100 Best Charities" by Worth, and one of the "Top 10 Best Charities" by Marie Claire.Amos is married to English sound engineer, Mark Hawley and they have a daughter who was born in 2000. The family divides their time between Sewall's Point in Florida; Kinsale, County Cork, Ireland, and Cornwall England. (Wikipedia)
