10 September 2013

The Piano Guys Press Conference

Last September 5, 2013, I was invited to The Piano Guys' press conference in SM Aura by the lovely people from Ivory Music & Video. I was able to speak to the group personally, shake their hands, have them sign my copies of their albums, and receive very inspiring advice from the group's members. I was unfortunately unable to make it to their concert, but they performed a couple of songs at the press conference, one of which was their version of What Makes You Beautiful - my all time favourite cover of theirs. Read more about the press conference under the cut. :)
I first heard of The Piano Guys on Tumblr, if I'm not mistaken. Someone I was following reblogged the video of their WMYB cover and it had appeared on my dashboard, piquing my interest. It's safe to say that I was left stunned and speechless after the video ended, rushing to share the link to my friends and post it on One Direction Philippines. I mentioned this to them later on, to which they jokingly replied, "so you're the reason why we're here!" Onstage were Jon Schmidt, the pianist; Steven Sharp Nelson, the cellist; Tel Stewart, the videographer/editor; and Al van der Beek, who according to a Wikipedia, is the 'music and studio guy.' They're really funny guys and they listened intently to what you have to say whenever you talk, which kicked my respect for them up a few notches or so to, to the maximum level.

They were very sweet to ask for the link of my blog, so if any of The Piano Guys are reading this, hello to you! Having taken piano lessons myself when I was younger (I eventually gave up due to laziness), I was very curious as to what motivated them to keep going. The advice they had given me was very insightful, but what stuck to me the most was what Al said. "Music isn't something you should be keeping to yourself," he told me with a smile. It was only one sentence out of what he had to say, but it stuck to me, and I couldn't get it out of my head for the rest of the night.

And yes, that is me taking a selfie with them. The conversation went a little like this: "Have you guys heard of a selfie?" "YEAH, OF COURSE!" "Let's take one!!!" I also asked them how they went about choosing which songs to cover, and being the 1D stan than I am, why they chose to cover What Makes You Beautiful. They said that it was something their kids were listening to, and one boring day, they started messing around with the piano and came up with the cover. The mere fact that they can come up with absolute brilliance on a boring day says a lot about their talent and passion for music. The most I can come up with on a boring day is tweeting ridiculous puns like, "I'm reading a book about anti-gravity. It's impossible to put down." It's either that, or unintelligible musings. Either way, my boring days are spent tweeting, not making jaw-droppingly good music. The photo above is of them performing WMYB live. It was quite the experience, much better live than on a computer screen. I do advise everyone to check out their other covers and originals on their YouTube. Their videos are amazing and always nicely filmed. With that being said, I'd like to thank Ivory Music & Video for the opportunity, and The Piano Guys for being so so nice to me!

6 comments:

  1. Woo I'm so jealous! It looks like you had an awesome time!

    Xo, Hannah

    sweetsweetnoir.net

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  2. Wow, this is really awesome, Nina! I just heard about them recently, and I'm in love with all of their covers! <3 You're really lucky to meet them (not to mention the selfie).

    xo,
    Loise.PH

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  3. Too bad I have discovered them only recently! I am very envious!

    http://orangeclosetdoors.blogspot.com/

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  4. Lucky! Hope they come back here. :<

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