Chilly Gonzales combines classical and rap at the Edinburgh International Festival

Or is he Jason Beck, the Canadian musician who found Europe was friendlier to his eclectic artistic vision than North America and has scratched a series of cultural itches from successive bases in Berlin, Paris and Cologne? Should one defer and refer to the self-styled President of the Berlin Underground, electro producer around town and in-demand collaborator with the likes of Daft Punk, Drake and Feist?

Or should he be acknowledged as Gonzo, the eponymous orator of his latest album, riffing and rapping on topics from cancel culture to algorithm culture in neo-classical music? Turns out any of those names work for him. “Whatever feels right to you,” he reckons. “Some people just call me Maestro but that’s not obligatory…”

On that note, Gonzales (we’re settling for that one) reckons he is “approaching mastery” on the piano. “Approaching but never achieving,” he says, “That’s the Buddhist way. In the same way that I would say we are all approaching death, approaching mastery is just a way of saying I want to get better at honouring the promise of music, that every concert should be a moment that is like a social glue between me and my audience, like folk music was and all great music in and out of the capitalist system continues to be.

“Yes, capitalism took it over and it turned into something that we can often see as very mercenary, but let’s not react against that by saying we’re gonna throw out all ambition. This is something I love about rap music. Rappers are able to not see it as a choice or battle between art and commerce. They feed each other in positive ways if you’re honouring that basic contract with the gods of music.”

Gonzales, as you can tell, is good with words. Yet he spent the decade from 2012 immersed in instrumental music, completing his Solo Piano trilogy, releasing a Christmas album and recording an album of modernised chamber music. Then he came out of therapy and had to find some other channel to express his opinions. Firstly, singing in French on his 2023 album French Kiss and then rapping in English with ein bisschen German on Gonzo.

“I’m trying to create a bridge between the music I make and what I think is the lingua franca of music today which is rapping,” he says. “For me, singing mostly sounds pretty old-fashioned and corny now. The magic trick of rapping is that it fools the listener into thinking it’s speaking. It’s still in a way highly sung even when you don’t hear traditional melodies.

“Singing was always something more rarefied. In the operas, people would sing when they wanted to express forbidden feeling. Rap is the opposite. Rap takes on the modes of how we communicate in society. That’s why it’s full of braggadocio and frankly also some ugly things because there are ugly things being said out in the world and rap isn’t afraid to represent those. That’s why it’s the art form we need for our time.”

How fascinating would it be to have Chilly Gonzales as your music theory lecturer? Well, you could if you were lucky enough to attend his workshop series, The Gonzervatory, and you still can if you check out his Music’s Cool With Chilly Gonzales radio series in which he dissects the work of a different artist from diverse genres of music. Turns out it’s all about tension and release. “A master storyteller knows when to create expectation, when to satisfy it, when to thwart it,” he says, “and that’s all any musician has basically ever done, at least in the western world.”

Gonzales never sits still. He is literally pacing the floor in his Cologne flat as we Zoom. Next stop is Edinburgh where he is a frequent Festival flyer, first attending with Hamburg’s Kaiser Quartett in 2015 (“the peak of my chamber music phase”) and then with Jarvis Cocker in 2017 to perform their Room 29 song cycle inspired by legendary Los Angeles hotel, the Chateau Marmont.

“I love the Festival season in Edinburgh,” he says. “Even in continental Europe there aren’t that many analogs to Festival season in August. That was really eye-opening for me in 2015.

“I’ve always been a very big fan of Scottish people,” he continues. “I’ve never met a Scottish person that I found annoying and there’s only a very elite group of countries I can say that about. And I know Scottish people love Germany because the Tartan Army took over my city at the beginning of the Euros. There was a few days when I went outside and thought ‘I’m in Scotland now and I’m here for it’. It was a real love affair between the city of Cologne and the Scottish fans.”

Gonzales has been based there for the past decade. “It’s a great city,” he says, “maybe even a similar size to Edinburgh. It’s not a sleepy village but it’s not a cruel city either and I love these in-between places.”

A Chilly Gonzales show also jumps between cultural zones. “If everything is laid out for you in a concert, how sad would that be?” he says. At the Festival, this will manifest as a greatest hits fiesta of solo piano works, electro hits, tracks from the new album and Music’s Cool masterclasses from the Maestro. “There’s gonna be provocation, there’s gonna be sweat, there’s gonna be punk rock, but always in service to the gods of music.”

Chilly Gonzales plays the Usher Hall, Edinburgh, 11 August as part of the Edinburgh International Festival. https://www.eif.co.uk/events/chilly-gonzales