A 21-year-old university student came to the rescue of a live performance of La La Land in Sydney on Saturday night after the orchestra's keyboardist suddenly fell ill. Sterling Nasa, who was in the audience at the ICC's Darling Harbour theatre, volunteered to play the complex score, saving the concert from potential derailment.
The performance, which features the film projected on screen while a live orchestra plays the score, proceeded normally until an extended 40-minute interval. Composer and conductor Justin Hurwitz then addressed the audience, asking if there was a pianist in the house with exceptional sight-reading skills. Nasa, a politics and international studies student at the University of Sydney, initially hesitated but was encouraged by a friend to step forward.
Nasa, who plays piano and organ and is a bagpipes tutor at his former school, faced a daunting challenge when he sat at an electric keyboard with a score he had never rehearsed. The most difficult moment came during John Legend's piece Start a Fire, which features an intricate synthesiser solo designed to match Ryan Gosling's character's hand movements on screen. Nasa chose to improvise the solo, a decision that earned him a resounding ovation from the audience.
Hurwitz praised Nasa's remarkable skill, noting that improvising on the fly with no rehearsal was a whole other level of talent. After the performance, Hurwitz expressed his gratitude and disbelief at the surreal turn of events. Nasa described the experience as a blessing, saying it was an unforgettable privilege to play a soundtrack he has long admired.
