The Piano Guys

The Piano Guys are a musical group consisting of Jon Schmidt (piano), Steven Nelson (cello), Paul Anderson (producer), and Al van der Beek (producer). They got their start on YouTube, and gained a large following. Their channel currently has over 2.5 million subscribers and has had over 350 million views. With their popularity so high, they ended up being signed by Sony in September of 2012. Their music consists of both classical and pop arrangements with some of their songs being both. One of their most viewed videos, "Beethoven's 5 Secrets," is a combination of the various melodies from Beethoven's fifth symphony and OneRepublic's "Secrets." Another one of their popular videos, "The Cello Song," is an arrangement of the prelude from Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 that was made for seven cellos, but each part is played by Nelson superimposed over himself. The quality of their videos is outstanding, and they are entertaining to watch. The Piano Guys have performed with a number of other musical artists and groups such as the American Heritage Lyceum Philharmonic, Lindsey Sterling, Alex Boyé, and Tiffany Alvord. Their three most recent albums, The Piano Guys (2012), The Piano Guys 2 (2013), and A Family Christmas (2013) have all topped the Billboard Classical charts at No. 1. They are currently preparing for a world tour stopping in the US, Brazil, Germany, Austria, Italy, the UK, Switzerland, Turkey, and Russia. Their music can be seen as a "popularizing" of some pieces of classical music or simply making classical arrangements of pop tunes, but their website does share the ideology that they follow, "We believe that good music can be a source of joy, inspiration, and fulfillment. We believe as Bobby McFerrin once said, listening to only one kind of music is like insisting on living in only one room of your home your entire life."

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