Website www.thepianoguys.com | Years active 2010-present | |
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Associated acts Alex Boyé, Lindsey Stirling, Shweta Subram, Tiffany Alvord, Tyler Ward Profiles |
Michael meets mozart 1 piano 2 guys 100 cello tracks the piano guys
The Piano Guys are an American musical group consisting of Jon Schmidt, Steven Sharp Nelson, Paul Anderson, and Al van der Beek. They gained popularity through YouTube, where they posted piano and cello renditions of popular songs and classical music. Schmidt and Nelson's music is accompanied by professional-quality videos shot and edited by Anderson and formerly by Tel Stewart. Their first five major-label albums The Piano Guys, The Piano Guys 2, A Family Christmas, Wonders, and Uncharted each reached number one on the Billboard Classical Albums chart.
Contents
- Michael meets mozart 1 piano 2 guys 100 cello tracks the piano guys
- fight song the piano guys amazing grace
- History and success
- Works
- 20102011
- 20122013
- 20142015
- 2016
- Awards
- Songs
- References
fight song the piano guys amazing grace
History and success
Anderson owned a piano shop in St. George, Utah when Schmidt asked Anderson if he could practice in his store for an upcoming concert. Months later, Anderson and Stewart started making amateur videos with Schmidt. Soon after, they collaborated with Schmidt, along with studio and music technicians Nelson and Van Der Beek. They quickly began producing weekly music videos and uploading to YouTube.
In June 2011, The Piano Guys won the "Most Up-and-Coming Channel" award in the YouTube "On the Rise" contest, with "Michael Meets Mozart" with Schmidt and Nelson. In September 2012, Sony announced the signing of Piano Guys. This resulted in a global release of the The Piano Guys album, followed by The Piano Guys 2 in 2013 and Wonders in 2014. On August 6, 2016, during their concert at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles, YouTube and Sony presented a plaque commemorating a billion total video views. Several of the group's YouTube videos have over 20 million views, and each has at least 750,000. As of October 2016, The Piano Guys' YouTube channel had over five million subscribers.
Their decision to perform at the presidential inauguration in January 2017 sparked controversy. While other musical groups declined invitations to perform, the group explained on their blog, "We don’t feel right limiting our positive message only to people that believe or act the same way we do.". At the inauguration's Liberty Ball, the Piano Guys played a custom rendition of "Fight Song", without consent from its original artist. This had been one of the songs used by Hillary Clinton during her presidential campaign. The Piano Guys later released a statement noting that their unscheduled rendition of the song was not meant to be political.
Works
Schmidt plays the piano and Nelson plays the cello (acoustic and electric). Most songs are composed of several audio tracks mixed together. Occasionally, previous audio tracks are superimposed to imitate many identical instrumentalists played simultaneously.
2010–2011
The first video posted to their YouTube channel is "Game Day". "The Dumb Song" came almost a year later, inspired by a commercial Schmidt saw in his childhood. "To the Summit" was inspired from a dream Schmidt had. He is accompanied with Ray Smith on a tenor saxophone. Among the Top 10 of their most popular videos, "Michael Meets Mozart – 1 Piano, 2 Guys, 100 Cello Tracks" was produced in part by the fans encouraging them to create more mashups of various song styles and artists. Created by Schmidt's son, Spencer, The Piano Guys and Spencer collaborated on the song "Bittersweet". With his cello, Steve played one of Bach's Cello Suite 1 with seven layers of cellos being played together on this piece.
Southern Utah, being where The Piano Guys are from, is showcased in "Desert Symphony", a video produced by Shaye Scott.
"Moonlight" was filmed predominantly in Salt Flats, Utah. This video shows Nelson playing Moonlight, a piece he composed for electric cello inspired by Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and the melody from Beethoven's 7th Symphony, 2nd movement. It was posted to YouTube on July 14, 2011.
This video shows Schmidt playing a modern version of Sergei Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C# minor. It was posted to YouTube on July 25, 2011. According to the description, Schmidt wrote this song when his son started his first band and researched music on YouTube. There are two versions of this song on YouTube; both feature Schmidt and a band consisting of Chris Wormer, Joel Stevenett and Jake Bowen. In the original 'Rockmaninoff' version, the volume of all instruments is well-balanced. In the 'Rock meets Rachmaninoff' version, the piano sounds much louder than the other instruments. The video also shows the sheet music for this song. The sheet music lists the play volume as 'pretty dang loud'.
Their cover of "Bring Him Home" from the musical version of Les Misérables was dedicated to those in the military and their families.
Along with Nelson, Schmidt played an arrangement of "Twinkle Lullaby", a version of "Twinkle Little Star".
Other tracks they've made are:
2012–2013
2014–2015
2016
Awards
YouTube Music Awards
Songs
PeponiThe Piano Guys · 2012
A Thousand YearsThe Piano Guys · 2012
Beethoven's 5 SecretsThe Piano Guys · 2012