Tori Amos

Tori Amos (born Myra Ellen Amos; August 22, 1963) is an American singer-songwriter and pianist.

She is a classically trained musician with a mezzo-soprano vocal range.

Having already begun composing instrumental pieces on piano, Amos won a full scholarship to the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University at the age of five, the youngest person ever to have been admitted.

She had to leave at the age of eleven when her scholarship was discontinued for what Rolling Stone described as "musical insubordination".

She was born on August 22, 1963 at the Old Catawba Hospital in Newton, North Carolina, during a trip from their Georgetown home in Washington, D.C., and was named Myra Ellen Amos.

When she was two years old, her family relocated to Baltimore, Maryland, where her father had moved his Methodist ministry from its original base in Washington, D.C. Her older brother and sister took piano lessons, but Tori did not need them.

From the time she could reach the piano, she taught herself to play: when she was two, she could reproduce pieces of music she had only heard once, and, by the age of three, she was composing her own songs.

She has described seeing music as structures of light since early childhood, an experience consistent with chromesthesia:

"The song appears as light filament once I've cracked it. As long as I've been doing this, which is more than thirty-five years, I've never seen the same light creature in my life. Obviously similar chord progressions follow similar light patterns, but try to imagine the best kaleidoscope ever—after the initial excitement, you start to focus on each element's stunning original detail. For instance, the sound of the words with the sound of the chord progression combined with the rhythm manifests itself in a unique expression of the architecture of color-and-light. ... I started visiting this world when I was three, listening to a piece by Béla Bartók; I visited a configuration that day that wasn't on this earth. ... It was euphoric."

At five, she became the youngest student ever admitted to the preparatory division of the Peabody Institute.

She studied classical piano at Peabody from 1968 to 1974.

In 1972, the Amos family moved to Silver Spring, Maryland, where her father became pastor of the Good Shepherd United Methodist church.

At thirteen, Amos began playing at gay bars and piano bars, chaperoned by her father.

In 1974, when she was eleven, her scholarship was discontinued, and she was asked to leave.

Amos has asserted that she lost the scholarship because of her interest in rock and popular music, coupled with her dislike for reading from sheet music.

Amos won a county teen talent contest in 1977, singing a song called "More Than Just a Friend".

As a senior at Richard Montgomery High School, she co-wrote "Baltimore" with her brother, Mike Amos, for a competition involving the Baltimore Orioles.

Amos was the lead singer of the short-lived 1980s pop group Y Kant Tori Read before achieving her breakthrough as a solo artist in the early 1990s.

Her songs focus on a broad range of topics, including sexuality, feminism, politics, and religion.

Her charting singles include "Crucify", "Silent All These Years", "God", "Cornflake Girl", "Caught a Lite Sneeze", "Professional Widow", "Spark", "1000 Oceans", "Flavor" and "A Sorta Fairytale", her most commercially successful single in the U.S. to date.

Amos has received five MTV VMA nominations and eight Grammy Award nominations, and won an Echo Klassik award for her Night of Hunters classical crossover album.

The song did not win the contest but became her first single, released as a 7-inch single pressed locally for family and friends in 1980 with another Amos-penned composition as a B-side, "Walking With You".

Before this, she had performed under her middle name, Ellen, and was considering the stage name "Sammy Jaye " at the time, but permanently adopted "Tori" after a friend's boyfriend told her she looked like a Torrey pine, a tree native to the West Coast.

By the time she was 17, Amos had a stock of homemade demo tapes that her father regularly sent out to record companies and producers.

Producer Narada Michael Walden responded favorably: he and Amos cut some tracks together, but none were released.

Eventually, Atlantic Records responded to one of the tapes, and, when A&R man Jason Flom flew to Baltimore to audition her in person, the label was convinced and signed her.

In 1984, Amos moved to Los Angeles to pursue her music career after several years performing on the piano bar circuit in the Washington, D.C. area.

In 1986, Amos formed a musical group called Y Kant Tori Read, named for her difficulty with sight-reading.

Finally, in July 1988, the band's self-titled debut album, Y Kant Tori Read, was released.

Although its producer, Joe Chiccarelli, stated that Amos was very happy with the album at the time, Amos has since criticized it, once remarking: "The only good thing about that album is my ankle high boots."

Following the album's commercial failure and the group's subsequent disbanding, Amos began working with other artists (including Stan Ridgway, Sandra Bernhard, and Al Stewart) as a backup vocalist.

She also recorded a song called "Distant Storm" for the film China O'Brien. In the credits, the song is attributed to a band called Tess Makes Good.

Despite the disappointing reaction to Y Kant Tori Read, Amos still had to comply with her six-record contract with Atlantic Records, which, in 1989, wanted a new record by March 1990.

The initial recordings were declined by the label, which Amos felt was because the album had not been properly presented.

The album was reworked and expanded under the guidance of Doug Morris and the musical talents of Steve Caton, Eric Rosse, Will MacGregor, Carlo Nuccio, and Dan Nebenzal, resulting in Little Earthquakes, an album recounting her religious upbringing, sexual awakening, struggle to establish her identity, and sexual assault.

This album became her commercial and artistic breakthrough, entering the British charts in January 1992 at Number 15.

She is listed on VH1's 1999 "100 Greatest Women of Rock and Roll" at number 71.

Amos is the third child of Mary Ellen (née Copeland) and Edison McKinley Amos.

In addition to Amos, the group was composed of Steve Caton (who would later play guitars on all of her albums until 1999), drummer Matt Sorum, bass player Brad Cobb and, for a short time, keyboardist Jim Tauber.

The band went through several iterations of songwriting and recording; Amos has said interference from record executives caused the band to lose its musical edge and direction during this time.