Piano Guys bringing mashups to Music Hall

Early on, pianist Jon Schmidt and cellist Steven Nelson set out to have a little fun by mashing up centuries old classical music with today’s pop songs.

With two friends — songwriter/producer Al van der Beek and producer/videographer Paul Anderson — they launched a YouTube channel to showcase how Mozart’s Lacrimosa from his landmark Requiem had a place in Adele’s multiplatinum ballad “Hello.”

Never in a million years did they think that six short years later, their little fun would give them:

• 4.92 million YouTube subscribers.
• A half-billion video views in all; several videos that topped 20 million views apiece.
• A record deal with Sony.
• Sold-out concert tours around the country.

“Our biggest goal is to have fun with this more than anything else,” Schmidt said during a phone call from home in Utah to talk about the Piano Guys’ Tucson concert on Aug. 4. “At first it was all about just having fun, really. We didn’t ever dream that it would result in a Sony contract and performing in Carnegie Hall. It really took us by surprise.”

Schmidt and Nelson, both classically trained musicians, started making music videos with van der Beek and Anderson around 2010 — just as YouTube was catching on. Their videos became instant hits and they went from unknowns to YouTube superstars.

“That was a really, really awesome position to be in at the birth of YouTube and Facebook when sharing videos was this cool thing that everyone was doing,” Schmidt said.

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The Piano Guys have posted 60 videos to date, many of them filmed in sometimes mind-boggling locations when you consider that they tote along a baby grand piano. Locations have included the middle of a man-made ice castle, atop a lush green hill in the Scottish flatlands and along a sparkling coastline with the sun fading in the distance.

Their mashups include “Let It Go” from the Disney film “Frozen” mixed in with Vivaldi’s Winter movement from “Four Seasons”; Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back” mashed up with Johann Sebastian Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos No. 3 and 5; Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and One Republic’s “Secrets”; and their latest mashup, Rachel Platten’s “Fight Song” with “Amazing Grace.”

They also have recorded piano/cello covers of several contemporary songs including Taylor Swift’s “Begin Again” and Christina Perri’s “A Thousand Years.”

Schmidt and Nelson have long toyed with mixing up old and new music, inspired in equal parts by Mannheim Steamroller and Billy Joel.

“When we wrote music there was a lot of classical influence. When we arranged, it was kind of inevitable because we love it and have a background in it. That’s what would come out in our arranging,” Schmidt said, noting that most of their songs are short enough to keep the attention of listeners whose view of classical music is that it’s stuffy and long.

The Piano Guys concerts attract a diverse audience of young and old, die-hard classical music fans and the uninitiated.