Tori Amos

Born in 1963 in Newton, North Carolina and raised in Maryland, Tori Amos developed an early career as a classical pianist before turning to songwriting. After an initial stint with the rock project Y Kant Tori Read, which released an album in 1988, she launched a solo career in the early 1990s with Little Earthquakes (1992), characterized by an emphasis on voice, piano and alternative rock arrangements, followed by Under the Pink (1994) and Boys for Pele (1996), which expanded her world to include religious, mythological and intimate references. Living between the United States and the United Kingdom, she went on to release From the Choirgirl Hotel (1998), To Venus and Back (1999) and Scarlet’s Walk (2002), where electronic, folk and pop elements became more prominent. Her writing blends song structures, the legacy of art music and more atmospheric registers, in an aesthetic often associated with baroque pop and art rock. Tori Amos has also explored orchestral formats with Night of Hunters (2011) and Gold Dust (2012), and composed the music for the musical The Light Princess, which premiered in London in 2013, while continuing studio recordings through Ocean to Ocean in 2021 and a stage career focused on solo piano or small ensembles.