A Fan Responds To The Negative Concert Review Printed In The Cedar Rapids Gazette

From Caroline Boehmer (TQTA40B@prodigy.com)

To Whom it May Concern:

After reading your review of the July 26th Tori Amos Paramount Theater performance in the Cedar Rapids Gazette, I had to wonder if we went to the same show. I appreciated your comment that she is a truly gifted musician. That being the point, what was the content of the remainder of the article based on? You contradict yourself when saying she is a truly gifted musician and then one sentence later saying that "everything about her keyboard and vocal technique is wrong". Who, might I ask, made you the final word on "right and wrong" musicianship? Tori was in fact a child prodigy and did attend the Peabody Conservatory, they choose not to keep her as a student when she did what she believed and played the music her way. Apparently you came to the show expecting a concert pianist with the voice of a female Pavoratti. Many of her fans believe she accomplishes this quality--though she does not claim to. She claims to be "a girl at her piano" singing the only way she knows and feels. Her words are meant to express her emotions in a way that you apparently did not understand. Saying that "her songs have a sameness that makes one melody weave seamlessly into another, which can edge toward boring", is simply ridiculous. "Talula", Tori's new single which appeared on the "Twister" soundtrack and has a driving loop beat under pounding harpsichord and characteristically non-"breathy" vocals, was followed up with "Me and a Gun", an a capella ballad sung almost entirely in her lower register --again strong vocals-- demonstrating her power and emotion as she recounted in her, as you put it, "odd lyrics", the night that she was raped. I honestly cannot believe that you sat through these songs, one after the other, and thought they "[wove] together seamlessly...[edging] toward boredom". Being a critic for the well known Cedar Rapids Gazette, I would have expected more of an accurate description of Tori's lyrics than "odd". Your article was clearly biased, uneducated, and offensive. I believe that you owe your readers and the rest of the staff at the prestigious Gazette an apology for this sadly distorted review of Tori Amos's beautiful performance.

Sincerely,
Caroline Boehmer

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