A 21-year-old university student found himself in an unexpected spotlight during a musical performance in Sydney on Saturday night, after a medical emergency forced the show to pause. Sterling Nasa, a politics and international studies student at the University of Sydney, was attending 'La La Land in Concert' — a touring production where a professional orchestra plays the film's score live — when the intermission stretched unusually long, as reported by The Guardian.
After 40 minutes, composer Justin Hurwitz, who won an Oscar for the film's music, walked onstage with an unusual request. The concert's keyboardist had fallen ill, and Hurwitz needed a replacement who could read sheet music and play piano. With no one available from the orchestra or their contacts, Hurwitz appealed to the audience of 2,500 people, asking if anyone was an amazing sight-reader, as captured in a video from an audience member.
A friend of Nasa volunteered him, and after a few questions, Hurwitz decided to take a chance. 'It wasn't a set-up at all. I was panicking, to be honest,' Hurwitz told 7NEWS Australia. Nasa, who also plays the organ and has worked as a bagpipes tutor, found himself performing the score in front of the composer and thousands of others without rehearsal.
Being a fan of 'La La Land,' Nasa knew the challenge included the John Legend piece 'Start a Fire,' which features a complex synthesizer solo mimicking Ryan Gosling's hand movements. 'The synth solo is really technical, and I thought, even a really high-level professional sight-reader would probably not be able to do it,' Hurwitz told The Guardian. Instead of attempting the tricky solo, Nasa improvised. 'He saw it coming up … and he just improvised,' Hurwitz said. 'That is a whole other skill on top of sight-reading. To be able to play a really cool solo in the right key, in the right scale, on the fly with no rehearsal — it was remarkable.'
The audience gave Nasa a standing ovation. 'It's always nice to get some applause, get some response,' he told 7NEWS. 'But I think also, just a little bit of terror.' Nasa described the experience as a 'blessing.'
