The Piano Guys

At their core, the Piano Guys consist of pianist Jon Schmidt and cellist Steven Sharp Nelson, yet they operate as a contemporary multimedia ensemble that also features Paul Anderson together with studio engineer and writer Al van der Beek. The collective crafts audiovisual works that fuse classical motifs with pop material, thereby positioning the ensemble’s YouTube channel among the planet’s most frequented. The enterprise originated in St. George, Utah, at Anderson’s piano retail shop, where Schmidt entered one afternoon seeking rehearsal time ahead of a scheduled concert. Before long, Anderson and Schmidt began capturing recordings and visuals, and after Nelson joined they began uploading the results to YouTube. Van der Beek’s participation further broadened their creative scope, yielding exuberant, contemplative, and visually compelling interactive pieces that accumulated millions of views and established the Piano Guys on a global scale.

Following an independently distributed 2011 collection titled Hits, Vol. 1, a self-titled album surfaced in 2012 on Sony Masterworks. Piano Guys 2 arrived the next year, succeeded in 2014 by the seasonal set A Family Christmas. Wonders, also issued that year, became the duo’s strongest Billboard 200 performer to date by reaching position twelve. Two years afterward the quartet delivered its sixth studio album, Uncharted, which climbed to number fifteen while claiming a fifth successive classical chart summit and a sixth new age number one. Concurrent with a sold-out concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall, the group released its inaugural retrospective compilation, So Far So Good, in mid-2017; the set incorporated a new version of the track “(It’s Gonna Be) Okay” that included guest vocals by Sir Cliff Richard. Their second holiday album, Christmas Together, appeared that October and restored them to the top of both the classical and new age rankings. The following year the foursome returned with Limitless, once more reshaping current pop songs by the likes of Ed Sheeran, Shawn Mendes, and Korean pop sensations BTS into their distinctive classical-pop blend. In 2020 the ensemble marked a decade of activity with its tenth studio album, 10, which gathered fifteen remastered classics alongside substantial new material to commemorate the group’s established career.