Composer Justin Hurwitz, who did the score for the 2016 Oscar-winning film, called Sterling Nasa's 2016 performance "remarkable"
Credit: 7NEWS Australia
NEED TO KNOW
- A 21-year-old university student stepped in to perform during a La La Land concert in Sydney after the show’s pianist fell sick
- Sterling Nasa improvised a complex solo, earning a standing ovation from the 2,500-person audience
- Composer Justin Hurwitz, who composed the score for the 2016 Oscar-winning movie, praised Nasa’s skills, calling his on-the-fly performance “remarkable”
A university student found himself on stage performing in front of 2,500 people alongside professional musicians after a pianist fell ill during a concert in Sydney over the weekend.
Oscar-winning composer Justin Hurwitz, who did the score for 2016's La La Land, found himself asking the audience for a piano player halfway through the La La Land in Concert show in the Darling Harbour Theatre on Saturday, May 30.
He said in a clip published by Australian outlet 7NEWS, “Is there somebody in the audience who is an amazing sight reader?" referring to the ability to look at a piece of sheet music for the first time and then play it accurately on the piano. "The keyboard. Anyone like an amazing sight reader?"
"You can sight read?” Hurwitz continued, appearing to gesture towards someone in the crowd as the audience started clapping and cheering.
Sterling Nasa was sitting towards the back of the crowd when his friend volunteered him to go on stage. The 21-year-old, who had purchased tickets to watch the show, soon became a part of the performance in a memory he will never forget.
Credit: Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty
Nasa told 7NEWS: “I'm more just glad that I managed to contribute in a very small way to what was an incredible orchestra.”
The politics and international studies student then found himself under the spotlight, speaking to the very composer he had long admired, along with staring at a complex score sheet of songs he had never played before.
“Until he started playing, I didn't know how it was going to go, like, I was very nervous,” Hurwitz told 7NEWS. “But I was trying to just like trust it, have fun with it. As soon as he started playing, I was impressed.”
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Hurwitz told Guardian Australia that he and his crew panicked during the extended interval and musicians even put out calls to backup players who were 15 to 20 minutes away.
But he knew time had run out and turned to the audience for help.
Nasa found himself struggling slightly during the performance of the John Legend piece “Start a Fire”, as it features a complex synthesizer solo that was written to match the erratic hand movements of Sebastian Wilder, played by Ryan Gosling, on screen.
“The synth solo is really technical, and I thought, even a really high-level professional sight-reader would probably not be able to do it,” Hurwitz told the outlet.
Nasa then decided to improvise and led the entire orchestra through the piece, leading to the audience giving him a standing ovation.
“He saw it coming up … and he just improvised,” Hurwitz, who won Best Original Score at the 2017 Oscars for La La Land, added to the outlet.
Credit: Lionsgate
“That is a whole other skill on top of sight-reading. To be able to play a really cool solo in the right key, in the right scale, on the fly with no rehearsal — it was remarkable.”
As the production team scrambles to find pianists to train for upcoming shows, Nasa has returned to his university lectures, but described the experience as “quite a blessing.”
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