ARTISTS DEN TO RELEASE LIVE TORI AMOS DVD ON JULY 13, 2010

Limited Edition DVD recorded at historic Park Avenue Armory private solo performance for just 100 fans


Exclusive pre-order at Barnes & Noble

New York, NY (June 9) -- On July 13, 2010 Artists Den Records will release the Limited Edition DVD “Tori Amos: Live from the Artists Den,” featuring a private solo performance by the Grammy-nominated artist for just 100 fans in the Veterans Room of New York’s historic Park Avenue Armory. The DVD’s release coincides will the nationwide premiere of the second season of “Live from the Artists Den,” the hit public television series spotlighting extraordinary artists performing in extraordinary settings, which features Amos’s concert in addition to shows by Ringo Starr with Ben Harper, Corinne Bailey Rae, David Gray, and others. For local listings, visit TheArtistsDen.com

The DVD’s special features include two songs not included in the televised broadcast, a 20-minute interview with music journalist Alan Light, a tour of the Veterans Room with Amos, and a 34-page scrapbook containing behind-the-scenes photos and a history of the historic venue.

Tori Amos is one of the most influential and respected artists of the modern era. The double-digit Grammy nominee has recorded 11 acclaimed studio albums – and gone platinum nearly 20 times – since emerging in the early ’90s.

Amos closed 2009 with a special solo show for 100 fans in New York City’s Park Avenue Armory, an immense historical landmark built in the late 19th century as both a military facility and a social club. Described as “Greek, Moresque, and Celtic with a dash of the Egyptian, the Persian, and the Japanese,” the Armory’s ornate Veterans Room provided a fitting setting for one of the most eclectic and culturally curious artists in music today.

Of playing the unique room, Amos said, “Let’s face it: when you’re playing in a room that doesn’t have a lot of personality, then you have to bring everything yourself. It’s sort of like a bad blind date—you hope the food’s good, and if the waitress is entertaining, you’ll make it through. But when you have a magical place, then all of a sudden it’s a conversation, and you could be falling in love on your first date.”

The DVD features both hits and rare fan favorites spanning Amos’ catalogue, from her breakthrough 1991 debut “Little Earthquakes” to her acclaimed 2009 album “Abnormally Attracted to Sin.”

The “Live from the Artists Den: Season 2” compilation album is currently available on iTunes and features “Ruby Through the Looking Glass,” a rare song Amos played to open this special show.

DVD Track List
1. Ruby Through the Looking Glass
2. China
3. Lust
4. Concertina
5. Virginia
6. Black Dove
7. Wednesday
8. Ophelia
9. Girl
10. Bells for Her
11. Toast
12. Maybe California

About the Artists Den:
The Artists Den presents extraordinary artists in extraordinary settings. Since its launch on U.S. public television in 2009, “Live from the Artists Den” has become a three-time NY Emmy-nominated series and has expanded with international distribution by Shine International to include A&E in Europe, Turner Broadcasting in Latin America, Sky TV in New Zealand and numerous other premium broadcast outlets. Artists who have played our stage include David Gray, Regina Spektor, Ringo Starr, Ani DiFranco, Raphael Saadiq, Aimee Mann, Corinne Bailey Rae, The Black Crowes and Ben Harper. Past Artists Den venues include the first art museum in America, the Masonic Hall Grand Lodge of New York, a former Archdiocese cathedral, the nation’s oldest operating seminary, a 1930s silent movie theater, and the diamond floor of Tiffany’s. Artists Den concerts are invitation-only and free. Many are benefit concerts, in which we encourage attendees to contribute donations to a local charity or community organization. Artists Den Records offers live concert CDs and DVDs from our shows. For more information, visit TheArtistsDen.com.

Media Contacts:
For the Artists Den:
Lois Najarian, lois@thedooronline.com
Alice White, alice@theartistsden.com

Tori Amos:

Aleix Martinez at Girlie Action Media aleix@girlie.com
Sarah Avrin at Girlie Action Media, sarah@girlie.com

TORI AMOS, MIDWINTER GRACES

Emotional. Powerful. Groundbreaking. Poignant. All appropriate adjectives describing the music of Tori Amos. Amos, who has been entertaining and electrifying audiences with albums such as Little Earthquakes, Boys for Pele, Strange Little Girls and this year’s acclaimed Abnormally Attracted to Sin, has been critically and commercially singled out for the impact she has had on music for the past two decades. From her rabid fan following to the respect she garners from writers, editors and peers, Tori Amos has left her mark with every new venture she conquers.

It isn’t a frequent thought, however, to link Amos with Holiday music, but you’re about to. Midwinter Graces, her gorgeous new release, is more than the typical fare you associate with the festival of Christmas. It’s bigger - with both traditional tracks handpicked by Tori and ones she has newly created. Her extraordinary interpretation of what makes up a Midwinter Grace is the true gift of this album. Not content to follow the norm, Tori re-examines all the facets of winter, from holiday to folklore to ritual.

Tori has been preparing for this album her whole life. Growing up predominately in Rockville, Maryland, the daughter of a Minister father and a mother who was deeply respectful of both religion and Mother Nature, the songs on Midwinter Graces are a combination of the music that shaped her as a child and the music she was compelled to express with elegance as an adult.

Working once again with colleagues Matt Chamberlain on drums, Jon Evans on bass, Mac Aladdin on guitars, and John Philip Shenale contributing arrangements for strings as well as big band, this CD was primarily written on the road between promotion and touring for Abnormally Attracted to Sin. Additional recording continued throughout the US tour from city to city on day offs with long-time sonic collaborators Mark Hawley and Marcel van Limbeek.

MIDWINTER GRACES, Q&A WITH TORI AMOS

What aspect of being a minister’s daughter has influenced this project?

Because I was brought up with music that the church would not only have the choir sing at festivities, but also that the congregation would sing, in a way, I must have learned this music probably before I learned almost any other music. At the same time, I was learning things that my brother would bring home, Led Zepplin, the Beatles, but I was hearing so much Church music every week. Being brought up with the carols of the Methodist church, I started to wonder where they originated from, because some of it seemed inconsistent with the other religious music I was hearing. As I got older, and investigated it, I began to learn that some of this music goes back hundreds and hundreds of years.

After the Reformation, Denominations started to develop themselves away from the Catholic church and it’s rituals, so they didn’t always have composers they could commission so they would draw from Sea Shanties, or Drinking Songs – pop songs of the day – and the Christians would think, “We’re going to take this song and put ideology about God to the hit tune.” It’s like taking Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” and making it a hymn. For example, instead of the line “The kid is not my son,” the early church may have changed it to, “And the virgin had a son.” Therefore, there is a tradition of Carols, whereby people changed the lyrics or people changed the music. And that’s how the variations on the themes of the Carols occurred. Although Midwinter Graces is very much a part of the 21st Century it also is a part of this very old tradition which embraces the ideas of variations on an original theme.

When did you start to realize there were other cultures that celebrated midwinter/solstice mythology around the same date that we now attribute to a Christian holiday?

In my teenage years I started getting interested in mythology. It became very eye opening and freeing for me to realize there were other cultures that celebrated the darkest night of the year in a very different way, as it was more about the cycles of nature. It started to make sense as I began to travel. My mother has such closeness with nature, but she is very much a Christian lady. I’ve always been aware and conscious of her deep faith, but she has also had such a respect and worship for the cycles in Mother Earth, and I think that came from her Native American tradition. But as I began to travel the world, I began to see there were other people, that might be church people, who also had a deep connection with the seasons and the cycles. As I began to see that, I began to research and study more, and realize that the idea of the Holly King and the Summer Queen, the joining of what is seen as winter and summer – the light and the dark - join forces together in order to create the new year and the torch is passed from one to the other. This is represented by the masculine to the feminine, and then from the feminine to the masculine, so the torch gets passed from one solstice to the other. The significance of the winter and summer solstice and what they meant to our ancient ancestors as well as the importance of the vernal equinox and the autumnal equinox are included as one of the running narratives on Midwinter Graces.

Are there any rituals pertaining to the Winter Solstice that you like?

There are. One ancient custom of our ancestors at midwinter was to celebrate the birthday of the Sun on December 25. Many cultures held festivities for different solar deities. These solar deities were the personification of the Sun’s rebirth at midwinter. So quite simply, at midwinter, our ancestors held a big birthday bash for the rebirth of the Sun every year. And this has been happening for thousands of years. I have tried to bring an interpretation through the carols of an old wisdom that harkens back to the Mystery Religions of antiquity.

When you think about the darkest night of the year as a time that we need to welcome in the light, it started to make so much sense to me that there would be all kinds of stories and ceremonies and rituals that would go along with this. The idea of birth in the ancient cultures was associated with fertility and that’s something, that in the Christian story, they’ve been very delicate with. Fertility isn’t really something that was embraced, because Mary was a virgin. However, the Christian story is covered as well on Midwinter Graces. I am following the music, the bloodline of the music, and yes, it has been embraced by Christianity, but before that, the music was embraced by many other belief systems and I married that in to the story as well; and they celebrated the re-birth of light in a different way, not with a virgin feminine but with the fertility idea – the joining of light and dark, coming together to then take us to the next season.

Winter can also be a metaphor for growing older: "A Silent Night With You" seems to happily glorify a long lasting love or marriage. Is this an accurate observation?

It’s very accurate. Doug Morris asked me to write this song. We were talking about Carols and he said, you’ve grown up with this music and written hundreds of songs, but I really want to know what you would do if you took some of the old Carols and put your perspective on it - from all you’ve seen and heard in your lifetime, and all the music you’ve been exposed to. He said he wanted it to be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever done. He told me not to shock him, just be beautiful. I said, “So no ‘She’s a hussy, Merry Christmas?”

With “A Silent Night With You,” I started thinking about times that we’re in now, and how they’ve been very hard for people, they’ve been pushed. What this time has taught us is that what we can value more than anything is the ability to want to be with someone. Sometimes we take it for granted, and I started to think about a couple that have that magic, but with everything they have going on, get distracted from it but are able to re-capture it again.

How did you choose which “classics” to record?

They’re my favorites. There were others that I looked at, but the editing process began to happen, and these seemed to work well with the originals that I was developing at the same time. “Pink and Glitter,” which is one of mine, and a big band track, is about the birth of a little girl. I have a daughter, and the idea that the Season isn’t about what presents you get or what material things you get but your gold is your family, and how you value those you love. “Shower the world with Pink” is the lyric in that, which is about all the little girls that were ever born, and will be born, because there is a lot of celebration about a little boy being born in the Christian tradition, so I thought we needed to celebrate the birth of the feminine as well. It’s a 40s style/Hoagy Carmichael style.

You’re not necessarily known for “upbeat material,” and while the album is a departure, there is a song that deals with loss.

There is a very old song called “Coventry Carol,” but I’ve called it “Candle: Coventry Carol” because I wanted to have an introduction that explains the Carol if you were a child listening to the record. The introduction tells that there is a song that talks about a story from a long time ago when the children weren’t safe. It’s the story of King Harrod and all the baby boys. That’s a tragic story and yet, I felt it was important to cover it because once I started to pull back on my Producers’ hat, you think if you’re going to have a complete palate of what the Season is, we need to represent it in a complete way. Historically, this did happen, and this was a song that was allegedly sung in the court in the 1400s in England – a well-known medieval Carol.

Growing up in Maryland and living part-time in England, you have a great understanding of the musical differences in the two countries. How did that dichotomy influence your choices for the songs on Midwinter Graces?

A lot of the melodies are different all over the world and I had to learn that through traveling. Some places in Europe have completely different Carols to represent the Seasons. Having traveled allowed me to see that there are many different traditions. I decided to choose the music I couldn’t stop thinking about, and that I could bring some thing to at this time. Each song represents a different part of the palate – for instance, Persian mystisism with a nod to Zarathustra and the possible Zorastarian Magi who came to see the Christ child within the narrative on “Star of Wonder.”

I’ve really educated myself and that made this record fun. The music wouldn’t have been so multilayered and integrated if I hadn’t. There is a song called “Our New Year,” which ends with hope. During Christmas you find people thinking about relationships that didn’t work, or someone who isn’t around any more, and this song has hope in the end, that maybe there could be a re-connection. I do go back to the idea of being nostalgic about holidays we’ve spent with people who, for whatever reason, may not be here any more. I felt like that is something that occurs at the Season that is bittersweet.

Was it a completely different methodology when you sat down to write a holiday song like “Our New Year” or “Pink and Glitter” than when you wrote songs for Abnormally Attracted to Sin?

I wanted to please people who are multicultural. I wanted to bring Carols to people that maybe haven’t embraced them before because of an ideology they don’t agree with. There is a lot of shame that exists in the Carols – if you analyze it, there is a dose of “the crucifixion is coming, don’t celebrate too much because this baby is going to die for your sins.” There is that, but there’s the side of growing up in the church where I thought Jesus was about the path of the compassionate Christ, and that has always intrigued me, not the shame that the Church Fathers are always fertilizing everything with. So I went in to the metaphorical garden and said let’s get rid of this shame fertilizer, and again because I grew up with all the teachings, you know where to look, you know the triggers, so I had to approach each Carol differently. Then I would write something that would maybe be not a mirror, but a modern day kind of view of that.

For the first track, “What Child, Nowell” I kept the lyric of “What Child is This?” and changed the melody because that’s the “Greensleeves” melody, and though the Americans love it, it’s like stealing the most famous folk tune of all time in the UK, so for the Brits to embrace it, I needed to twist the melody and keep the lyric so that both sides of the pond can embrace this beautiful idea. I really liked the idea that we can all awake – and each child can awake – with the second coming of Christ within each heart by being a compassionate person. It was Jesus who said “You are the Light of the World,” so I worked off that. When the music came to me, honestly, I haven’t really experienced it this way as my work usually has a level of pain in it and on this record, for the most part, I found that the music was so incredibly loving.

Considering you recorded Boys for Pele inside a church, was there ever consideration for recording this album in a church? I suppose this album is so much more than that though, it’s not a traditional holiday record by any means.

If I had recorded in the Church, I wouldn’t have had the energy of nature, which I needed just as much. In a way, the album is transcending any religious structure but not disrespecting it. If I had recorded in a church, I only would have acknowledged that mythology and I wanted to be inclusive of all of them. I had to keep really neutral yet know my stuff.

The artwork is divided into the 4 elements, what’s the meaning?

The elements are no different than the four seasons – winter, spring summer and fall. We have four seasons and I wanted to attribute that to the four elements: fire, water, earth and air. These elements are the authors of life and carry the regenerative power of Mother Nature. This is yet another form of rebirth. We used the old symbology and I thought it was important to have the earth cycles there.

In a way, this is a family affair – your daughter Natashya is the guest vocalist on “Holly, Ivy, and Rose,” your niece Kelsey Dobyns is the guest vocalist on “Candle: Coventry Carol” and the angel in the artwork is your nephew, Casey Dobyns. Was that a conscious decision?

A very conscious decision. This is what holidays are, they are about families staying together, and I thought, what better way than the next generation and the joining of that.

You've contributed your own wintery/holiday songs to a big song list: is there any special feeling of pride or awe when you consider all the greats in music history, from The Beatles to Bing to Elvis to Aretha to everyone else who has created winter/holiday albums?

I hadn’t thought of it that way yet. Now I have to think about that…there is so much energy put in to creating the record and getting it finished and getting it ready to send out to the world that I haven’t sat back and thought about the great company that I am privileged to be a part of. But yes, it’s a great feeling. After all these years it seemed time to create a work, but not regurgitate music you’ve heard 100s of times. I really wanted to put something out there that would merge the ancient and the modern.

10/09