EMILIANA TORRINI & THE COLORIST ORCHESTRA Reveal New Tracks “Animal Games” & “Birds”
Watch The New Video To “Animal Games” Here:
“Ms. Torrini’s voice is warm and whispery and appealingly unpredictable: she knows when to flatten the melody with a half spoke phrase and when to carry it up and away.”
–THE NEW YORK TIMES
Emiliana Torrini & The Colorist Orchestra reveal two new collaborative tracks “Animal Games” & “Birds”, both are re-workings of live favourites from Emiliana’s catalog, the original tracks were released on ‘Tookah’ in 2013 and ‘Me And Armini’ in 2008 respectively. Rough Trade released the “Emiliana Torrini & The Colorist Orchestra” album in December 2016, an innovative album containing nine reworkings of Emiliana Torrini songs from her catalog along with two brand new songs.
The Colorist Orchestra is a Belgian ensemble founded by Aarich Jespers and Kobe Proesmans in 2013. They re-envision the repertoires of established musicians from across genres using traditional classical instruments and arrangements, along with a variety of their own musical inventions to contribute innovative, never-before-heard sounds and grooves to their compositions and re-compositions.
Emilíana stopped working with her band two and a half years ago and instead played with whoever contacted her. Those adventures led her to play with gypsies in Cordoba, with an experimental jazz band in Berlin and she performed two sold out shows with the 60 piece Icelandic symphony orchestra in Reykjavík to name a few.
When Jespers and Proesmans, fans of Torrini’s rich catalogue, invited her to collaborate on a series of live concerts, she was intrigued, and asked them to re-compose one of her songs to see what their concept was all about. The result, a wholly novel rendition of “Animal Games” from her most recent album Tookah convinced Torrini that working with the group was a creative opportunity that she shouldn’t dare miss.
Although The Colorist Orchestra had initially planned to “re-color” only seven of Torrini’s songs, she was so enthralled by what she’d heard that she convinced them to work with her on fifteen of her previously-released tracks. Jespers and Proesmans pulled together a new eight-piece ensemble to create live re-envisionings of the works.
The group created a new world out of the music, and while Torrini admitted that she could barely recognize many of her own songs in the rearrangements, the collaboration – from emails and Skype calls to rehearsals, sound-checks, and finally, the live concerts – came together organically and beautifully, with Torrini’s talent elevating the Colorist ensemble’s creativity, and the group helping her rediscover the joy and the power within her own songs in this new light.
The shows’ reception from audiences and press was exceptional, and the Colorist members and Torrini realized a live album would enable them to share this magical experience more broadly.
Emiliana Torrini’s voice has been embedded in your brain over the last 20 years whether you knew it or not. She was a member of GusGus, and she’s written/produced/performed numerous songs and hits with the likes of Kylie Minogue, Thievery Corporation, Bill Callahan and more. She herself had a #1 hit in a few countries with the song “Jungle Drum” and in Germany it stayed in the #1 position for nine weeks! She contributed a song to the multi-platinum Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers Soundtrack and her songs have been feature in many television shows. Her debut album was released in 1999 and was followed by three more critically acclaimed titles, the most recent being Tookah, in 2013.
Emiliana Torrini, vocals
The Colorist Ensemble:
Kobe Proesmans – percussion, calabas
Aarich Jespers – percussion, flapamba
Sep François – melodic percussion, hammered mbar
Wim De Busser – grand piano, prepared piano, keys
Tim Vandenbergh – doublebass, el.bass
Gerrit Valckenaers – bass clarinet, stones, mirrors, glass bowls, electronics
Jeroen Baert -violin, mandolin
Karel Coninx – viola
