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A pianist on stage realized she'd prepared the wrong piece. Then she pulled off a miracle.

The encouraging conductor helped turn her "worst nightmare" scenario into a viral, magnificent feat.

Imagine showing up on stage to play a piano concerto and finding out you have to play a different one in two minutes.

You know that nightmare where you show up to the final day of class and there's a huge test and you panic as you realize you've missed the whole semester and haven't studied at all? Or how about the one where you have to give a big presentation at work and you show up totally unprepared—no notes, no visuals, no speech—and you have to wing it?

For musicians, the equivalent is showing up on stage to perform without preparation or rehearsal, which is exactly what happened to Portuguese pianist Maria João Pires when she was on stage in front of an audience of 2,000 people in Amsterdam in 1999. As the orchestra started to play, she quickly realized she was in trouble—she had prepared the wrong concerto. As the musicians played the two-and-a-half-minute intro to Mozart's Piano Concerto No.20, Pires sat at the piano in terror. She had not practiced that piece and she didn't even have the sheet music for it.

She had, however, played that concerto before, and in an inspiring feat of musicality, muscle memory, and sheer human will—along with some encouraging words from conductor Riccardo Chailly—Pires got herself centered and locked in, playing the correct concerto in its entirety, miraculously without missing a note.

The full story actually feels even more daunting for those of us who can't sit down and pound out a piano concerto at will. It turned out that Pires wasn't even the original pianist who was slated to play at this concert. She was asked the day before to be a replacement for the pianist who couldn't perform, so she didn't have a lot of time to prepare anyway. However, she'd misheard the number of the Mozart piece over the phone and thought it was a piece she had played only a couple of weeks before. If that had been the case, she would have been fine, even with the short notice. But having the wrong concerto in mind and then not even having the sheet music for the correct one was an extra pile-on from an already high-pressure situation.

The fact that it was a general rehearsal and not the official performance wasn't much consolation, since it was an open rehearsal with a full audience. A rehearsal audience is likely more forgiving than an audience that paid top dollar for a concert, but it's still mortifying to have thousands of people expecting you to perform something you have not prepared for.

Thankfully, Pires had performed the concerto multiple times, most recently about 10 or 11 months prior, so she wasn't clueless. But perfectly recalling something you did nearly a year ago at that level and under that amount of pressure is absolutely incredible.

The conductor who encouraged her later talked about how impressive it was. "The miracle is that she has such a memory that she could, within a minute, switch to a new concerto without making one mistake," said Chailly. However, Pires insists that her memory is not exceptional at all and that she is "very, very average" among musicians.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

But it wasn't the only time this happened to Pires. "I must say, this happened to me another two times in my life. In total, three times," she told ClassicFM's Joanna Gosling. "I hope it never happens again."

Pires already gets nervous about performing, despite being a world famous concert pianist.

"I normally feel very stressed on stage," Pires said. "It's not the stage, it's not the public, it's the responsibility. I feel insecure. And that's why I'm not a stage person somehow. There is one side of me that feels okay—I feel okay with the people. But being on stage and being responsible for something can give me some panic."

As Gosling points out, if you were just listening to the performance, you'd never know there'd been an issue. But the camera on her face tells an entire story during the orchestral opening as we see her grappling with the crisis she'd found herself in. Watching the moment she decided she had no choice but to just go for it, whatever happened, is remarkable. A true testament to the power of repetition and the resilience of the human spirit, and a reminder that musicians truly are magicians in so many ways.

Seanna Faith McCarty screamed at a cameraman that people in the crowd were dying.

When you cram a mass of humanity onto a stadium floor, and those humans are fans of the performer on stage in front of them, anything can happen. People have been crushed in mosh pits before—the Who and Pearl Jam concerts have seen multiple fans trampled to death in a concert, for example.

So when eight people were killed and dozens more injured at rapper Travis Scott's Astroworld Musical Festival in Houston last Friday, it was definitely tragic but not totally unprecedented. What was hard for people to grasp was how the tragedy was handled in real time by the people with power to do something about it.

Viral video shows two young concertgoers desperately trying to get a cameraman to stop the show because people were dying. One of them, Seanna Faith McCarty, pleaded with him to tell someone to stop the show, pointing toward the crowd and saying that people were dying. Another concertgoer, identified on Twitter as Ayden Cruz, stood on the ladder of the camera platform and also yelled at the cameraman to stop the show.

Watch:


Here's another angle of the attempt to alert the crew member to the deadly situation on the ground.

However, no one stopped the show. According to Insider, at one point, Scott can be heard over the loudspeaker saying: "Who asked me to stop? You all know what you came here to do." Insider also reports that concertgoer Cody Hartt said he alerted security that people were being crushed, and they allegedly responded, "We already know, and we can't do anything to stop the show. They're streaming live."

McCarty detailed the story of how she ended up on the camera platform, desperately trying to get someone to stop the show and do something about the deadly conditions in the crowd.

She described how she and her friend had wanted to be close to the stage, but ended up a ways back, on the side near a walkway. They were surrounded by chest-high metal barriers, and she said after waiting two hours for the concert to start, "Every gap was filled. Where your feet were placed was where they stayed." The energy of the crowd rose as the start time neared.

"Within 30 seconds of the first song, people began to drown—in other people," she wrote.

"There were so many people. Tall men, women. Women and men where the only thing they could see was the back of the person in front of them. The rush of people became tighter and tighter. Breathing became something only a few were capable of. The rest were crushed or unable to breathe in the thick, hot air. My friend began to gasp for breath, and she told me we needed to get out. We tried. There was nowhere to go. The shoving got harder and harder. If someone's arms had been up, it was no longer a possibility to put it down. So, people began to choke one another as the mass swayed. It became more and more violent."

She went on to describe how people were screaming for help and begging security for help.

"None of that came," she wrote. "We continued to drown. More and more. One person fell, or collapsed, it doesn't matter how it started. Once one fell, a hole opened in the ground. It was like watching Jenga tower topple. Person after person were sucked down. You could not guess from which direction the shove of hundreds of people would come next. You were at the mercy of the wave. I watched my friend be dragged away from me and lost sight of her. I began to realize in that moment that there is a way to die that no many people know about. Being trampled to death."

McCarty described the "shrieks of animals" and "sinkholes of people" all around her. She was shoved toward the ground and saw the body of a man, followed by "layers of fallen people."

"I felt a primal fear rip through me, and I'm not sure anyone understood the magnitude of the situation below," she wrote. "I screamed there were people on the floor. There were people. Unconscious. Being trampled by every foot that slammed into the ground as each individual tried to keep themselves upright."

A man finally grabbed her and pulled her out and away from the sinkhole of people. She was able to make her way to the back of the crowd, where she found people "just standing there. Like nothing was happening. Like people weren't dead a few feet from them."

She spotted the cameraman on the platform and climbed the ladder to get his attention. She pointed to the hole, telling him people were dying. He told her to get off the platform.

"I screamed over and over again," she wrote. "He wouldn't even look in the direction, so I pushed the camera so it pointed toward where I had just come from. He became angry. He called someone else up. I told him the same thing. People were dying, we needed to stop the music, we needed help, we needed attention towards the mass because I thought if only these people were aware, maybe they would do something. The other man grabbed my arm, and told me he would push me off the 15ft platform with no sides if I didn't get down. I told him to help. I told him people were dying. I showed him where. He wouldn't look in the direction either. I was in disbelief. Here were two people that could actually do something. Had the power to do something. Cut the camera, call in backup, pause something. They did nothing."

Then the crowd started booing at her. "They pointed their fury at me, unleashed a rage," she wrote. "I screamed people were dying over and over. No one would listen."

Finally, she climbed down from the platform and called 911. The operator told her they were calling the medical team in. She told them over and over that the concert needed to be paused to give the crowd light and awareness of the deaths. Nothing happened.

Two medical workers arrived and McCarty explained what she'd seen. They said they'd gone in and seen nothing. Two girls who had also been in the pit were nearby and explained what and where it was and they all led them to it. They climbed over the barrier and went through the people.

In her post, McCarty reassured readers that her friend made it out okay. But at least eight concert-goers were killed in the melee and 25 were taken to the hospital, including a 10-year-old in critical condition, according to USA Today. The names of the victims has been released: Mirza Danish Baig, 27; Rodolfo Peña, 23; Madison Dubiski, 23; Axel Acosta Avila, 21; Franco Patino, 21; Jacob Jurinek, 20; Brianna Rodriguez, 16; and John Hilgert, 14.

Here's to the people like Seanna McCarty who did everything in their power to get help for the people trapped in and trampled by the crowd. In the face of a frenzied mob, keeping your head and having the courage to take action is admirable, especially considering how many people neglected their basic sense of humanity in this situation.

Coldplay/Facebook, John Legend/Twitter

In a time when normalcy has flown out the window, we're all desperate for ways to keep calm and carry on from a socially safe distance.

Since performers have suddenly found themselves without audiences, many artists are taking to social media to touch base with fans. And the result is a remarkably human connection that art and music tend to create—especially when the performer is as delightfully unassuming and down-to-earth as Coldplay's Chris Martin.


Seriously, I like Coldplay's music, but I had no idea that Chris Martin was so freaking lovable.

From the moment he started his live video last night, I found myself calmed by Martin's infectious smile and undeniably likable personality. He spoke about all of us being part of one human family, but in a totally sincere and unpretentious way. He called out the countries represented in the comments with love and solidarity, especially hard hit areas like Italy and Iran. He played parts of songs that people requested in a raw, unfiltered performance with little mistakes and the vocal strain of the morning (it was early in the U.K.).

The whole video served as a healing balm and a sweet, authentic reminder that we're all just human beings experiencing this weird new reality together.

Using the hashtag #TogetherAtHome, Martin invited other artists to pick up where he left off and create their own live mini-concerts from home for everyone stuck in isolation. John Legend picked up the torch and will be doing a concert from home at 1pm Pacific today.

The Indigo Girls have also announced a live concert for this coming Thursday, and I'm sure more artists are lining up to keep us entertained and keep our spirits up as well.

If the world is going to go all topsy turvy, at least we have artists to help us reorient ourselves.


Benjamin Coyle-Larner, aka Loyle Carner, is a rapper from South London whose music is often described as confessional, vulnerable, and sensitive.

He raps about his family, grief, and handling the new responsibilities of adulthood. If you're in the U.S., you may not know much about his music, but after an admirable move at one of his concerts, his glowing reputation may precede him.

[rebelmouse-image 19532202 dam="1" original_size="750x421" caption="Loyle Carner at Field Day 2017. Photo by John Lubbock/Flickr." expand=1]Loyle Carner at Field Day 2017. Photo by John Lubbock/Flickr.


Before he kicked off a recent performance, Carner took the time on-stage to call out a sexist heckler.

Carner's opening act, a duo of women, Elisa and Srigala, had been harassed by a male audience member during a show on Oct. 9, at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England.

Before Carner started his set, he approached the audience and asked them to point out the man responsible for the sexual harassment.

All GIFs via ashleyshite/Twitter.

And Carner quickly told the fan to leave the show.

He even pointed out the perpetrator to security to make sure he left.

The fan responsible was escorted out by security to a chorus of cheers and was banned from the venue. After the fan left, Loyle Carner's show continued without incident.

The response to Carner's zero-tolerance policy at his shows has been overwhelmingly positive.

His move has been heralded by old fans and new admirers alike.

And Elisa and Srigala expressed gratitude for their tourmate too.

Sadly, it's not even the first time this month that Carner put a stop to sexual harassment at one of his shows. Just days prior, Carner had to step in when a male fan wouldn't leave some women in the audience alone.

Too often, the onus is put on the person experiencing harassment to react, respond, or immediately report.

But, as we've seen recently with the numerous individuals coming forward to report incidents with Bill Cosby, Roger Ailes, and Harvey Weinstein, responding in the moment (or even years later) is difficult and frightening. Many victims fear they won't be believed or they'll experience personal and professional retribution.

That's why it's so important for all of us to call out offensive behavior when it occurs. It's particularly important for men to call out other men for inappropriate words and actions. Boardrooms, newsrooms, hotel rooms, or even college concert venues — no place should be a safe haven for crude or violent behavior. It's on all of us.

Hats off to Loyle Carner for showing how it's done.

Watch the full video of Carner giving that harasser the boot. And check out his earnest, catchy, and unsurprisingly women-friendly music.