"Musical insubordination" meant she refused to read sheet music & preferred playing Led Zeppelin over classical music. She recently delivered a graduation speech at Peabody, so they welcomed her back & acknowledged her accomplishments.
About the instruments behind her - this was shot at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1991 where she was opening for The Moody Blues, which is why there’s a bunch of instruments behind her and she’s playing an electric piano instead of a real piano. Her set was completely solo. It was before she released Little Earthquakes so she was pretty much completely unknown at the time. The next year, after LE was released, she came back to the festival and did her own headlining set (also solo), where she had upgraded to a real piano (a Steinway; she hadn’t yet started playing the Bösendorfer that she became quite known for later in her career). Both sets are available on DVD/Blu-ray as “Tori Amos - Live at Montreux 1991/1992”.
nice. i'd love to see tommy react to more tori - his comments were really thoughtful, and i like that he focuses a lot on the piano. the way she uses/features it in so many of her songs is genius! btw, she's still the youngest person ever accepted into johns hopkins' peabody institute at age 5.
It was Johns Hopkins music conservatory, and back in those times it was a strict classical conservatory (in the late 60's/early 70's) . She was admitted at age 5, and kicked out at 11. She continued on to play gay bars with her minister father as chaperone, then in the 80's she fronted a glam-rock band, before in the early 90's taking the dive into what made her famous. She's literally been playing the piano for 60 years.
