New York, NY (Top40 Charts / Sony Music Masterworks) With nearly 2 billion views on YouTube for their strikingly original and self-made music videos, THE PIANO GUYS today premiere a new visual for their new cello and piano arrangement of Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" - watch here. Originally recording "Pictures at an Exhibition" for their 2014 album Wonders, The
Piano Guys have newly recorded the Mussorgsky classic, which is available everywhere now. Years in the making, the new video features master puppeteer Márton Harkel as he performs as puppet versions of The Piano Guys' very own Steven Sharp
Nelson on cello and Jon
Schmidt on piano. With each puppet taking over 150 hours of handmade love to design and craft, the resulting video is the perfect companion to the track, which captures the excitement of art in all its forms.
Of the new video, THE PIANO GUYS' Steven Sharp
Nelson says, "We came across a social media post that shared a tourist's video of an extraordinarily talented puppeteer, Márton Harkel, who performs as a busker on the streets of Budapest. What caught our eye was his cellist puppet, as it was a near perfect copy of the puppeteer. And as he made the motions of playing cello, his puppet would mimic his movements with astounding musicality. It was captivating. It was like watching art come alive. We immediately imagined pairing his puppet design and marionette skills with our arrangement of 'Pictures at an Exhibition' — the mainstay of a suite of classical pieces written about art coming alive! And the timing of it couldn't have been better — as we're releasing it during a time when we can't film traditional music videos due to the current pandemic's safety measures. So this is our pandemic approved, proxy puppet's performance of 'Pictures at an Exhibition'!"
Since formally introducing themselves in 2011 on YouTube, The
Piano Guys - Steven Sharp Nelson, Jon Schmidt, Al Van der Beek and Paul Anderson - unassumingly arrived as a musical phenomenon. Over the course of six studio records, two Christmas releases, and a fan favorite live album, they have impressively amassed over 3 billion global audio streams, clocked over 1.9 billion YouTube views, earned six No. 1 debuts on the Billboard Top Classical Albums Chart, sold out concerts in almost every corner of the world, averaged nearly 2 million unique monthly listeners on Spotify, and attracted a diehard audience. Not to mention, they've appeared in The New York Times, Fast Company, BuzzFeed, Mashable, and People, were featured on CBS Sunday Morning and performed on the TODAY Show, Good Morning
America and The
Tonight Show.
