The screen above the stage at the Roundhouse is unusually wide, with the dimensions of your average letter box. Below it sits a gleaming Steinway. When the pianist comes on, in monogrammed silk robe and slippers, and readies himself at the keyboard, the screen's purpose is revealed. He begins to play, slowly and economically at first, then with increasing intricacy and speed. The action, a blur of fingers across the keys, is caught on camera and magnified overhead: wizardry in super-widescreen.
The pianist is Chilly Gonzales, a Montrealer (real name Jason Beck) with one of the more unorthodox careers in recent music. He made a name for himself in the late 90s as a prank-loving rapper, then morphed into a successful songwriter and producer (Feist, Daft Punk) and, even more improbably, a composer of delicate piano pieces. As a rapper, he played for laughs at the risk of appearing artistically unserious; the punchline, in his piano work, is that he's a genuinely gifted player and composer.
He has never been shy about highlighting this fact: over the years, Gonzales has referred to himself repeatedly, and only partly in jest, as a musical genius. His stage attire – robe, slippers, white gloves – sends up his pomposity without defusing it. Pianovision, as he calls the live camera feed overhead, is merely his latest means of drawing our attention to his talents.
Tonight, though, in spite of the hi-vis virtuosity, Gonzales wants to make us feel more at ease with the piano. His aim, in Re-Introduction Etudes, the piano workbook he's promoting on this tour, is to demystify an instrument that can seem overwhelming in its physical breadth as well as the complexity of its demands. The screen is there to demonstrate as well as intimidate.
It turns out that Gonzales is extremely good at sharing his knowledge. He's the piano teacher you wished you'd had as a kid: an inveterate showoff who nevertheless understands your panic and has strategies at his disposal to relieve it.
He deals with the breadth issue first: the piano is essentially just one octave repeated seven times – think of it as a dozen keys, not 88. Composers working with pop singers who aren't the full Mariah Carey tend to focus on a single octave in the middle of the board. (For French actors moonlighting as whispery chanteuses, just a couple of keys will do.)
Limitation can be a good thing, he says. In fact, the piano is itself a limited instrument. It is not innately expressive, like the human voice. He hits a single key repeatedly, to show that it will sound the same whether you're a musical genius or a complete novice. It's the little tricks you use that bring the instrument to life. He shows us a few – arpeggio, tremolo, rubato – which he deploys regularly in his own work. What may appear dazzling in Pianovision is really, he insists, just a few simple contrivances executed with a flourish.
To introduce some variety into the lesson, Gonzales invites a couple of "students" up to play with him. Listening to a precocious but heavy-handed young pianist named Joe, he offers a composing tip: dial back the "bombastic Wagnerian vibe" and just noodle around a bit. It's in letting your fingers drift in and out of a melody with no particular goal in mind that you open yourself up to inspiration.
Later on, with a Belgian piano teacher, he emphasises the percussive qualities of piano playing: ultimately, it all comes down to rhythm. If you really want your kid to be a great pianist, he advises parents in the audience, buy them a drum kit.
This being a Chilly Gonzales gig, its intentions are not purely pedagogical. In the past, he has piano-battled the rocker Andrew WK, insulted Jools Holland and climbed on to the keyboard to play Every Breath You Take by the Police with his feet. Tonight, he breaks up his lessons with banter and the occasional hip-hop interlude ("It's time to rap on a waltz!"). He takes gleeful digs at fellow musicians, insinuating that Sébastian Tellier is a dunce and mocking Drake's rapping style, and coerces the evening's special guest, the pianist James Rhodes, into playing a piece from Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice "the wrong way" – by smothering it with syrup – to show how radically interpretations of a single work can diverge.
Watching Gonzales in action is never boring; there's a good reason why one of his albums is called The Entertainist. The performance is not as riotous or flat-out fun as some of his previous appearances, but it's still the most diverting piano lesson you're ever likely to receive.
