Tori Amos Performs with String Quartet in Manhattan

 


Tori Amos stepped outside of her comfort zone for her latest album, Night of Hunters, a classical song cycle. Her tour in support of that record also finds her stepping outside of her typical patterns, albeit in a more minor way, with a string quartet augmenting the arrangements of a majority of the songs in her set. Though her show touches on a few selections from Night of Hunters, the concert is more of a gussied-up version of her usual piano-centric show rather than a full-on classical performance.

Though such a classical show could've been intriguing, her approach to this format Saturday during her second night at Manhattan's Beacon Theater was a lot more crowd-pleasing. Amos' set drew on nearly all of her albums, with solo piano renditions of numbers such as "Horses" and "Icicle" alongside reworked versions of oldies like "Spark," "Siren" and "Winter."

The new arrangements, which Amos devised with longtime collaborator John Philip Shenale for the Apollon Musagète quartet, skipped the bombast and schmaltz typically associated with adding strings to pop songs. Instead, the group provided subtle texture and unlikely rhythmic flourish to numbers "Suede" and "Cruel," while casting the strong melody of her Boys for Pele ballad "Hey Jupiter" in a new light.

Though the string section brought novelty to the performance, some of the most compelling moments came when Amos was by herself at her piano. Amos dropped a surprising cover of U2's "Running to Stand Still" midway through the main set, warping its melodic phrasing a bit and repeating its climax enough times to make the Irish rockers seem rather understated by comparison.
The encore began with Amos playing a flawless version of her Little Earthquakes tearjerker "China," drawing applause as she mention New York in the verses, while delivering the song's heartbreaking, soaring chorus with remarkable confidence and grace. Amos' more recent material leans a bit too heavily on concept and often impenetrable narrative, but it was good to see that she can still reconnect with sentimentality and intense, undiluted emotion.