The Piano Guys

About

The Piano Guys built something genuinely unusual: a YouTube channel where piano and cello covers of pop songs, shot in jaw dropping locations, racked up billions of views. The group from St. George, Utah, consists of pianist Jon Schmidt, cellist Steven Sharp Nelson, videographer Paul Anderson, and producer Al van der Beek. Their signature move is the mashup, blending classical heavyweights like Vivaldi, Bach, or Tchaikovsky with contemporary artists ranging from Coldplay to Shawn Mendes. Their cover of Christina Perri's "A Thousand Years" alone has logged over 223 million views. Signed to Sony Masterworks in 2012, their first eight major label albums all hit number one on Billboard's Classical or New Age charts, and their album Wonders debuted at number 12 on the Billboard 200. The videos are half the spectacle: Anderson films the duo performing at the edge of cliffs, in ice caves, atop moving trains, and at Wonders of the World like the Great Wall of China and Petra. For "Michael Meets Mozart", Nelson recorded 100 separate cello tracks, including percussion he made by drumming on the instrument itself.