LIVE @ The Piano Shop I.III: Stephen Whale & Wayne Weng 2012-03-28

One of the thrills of putting on the LIVE @ The Piano Shop series was to create unique experiences. Acoustic piano duets, one of the more difficult concerts to curate – instrumentally and with willing musicians, was an early goal to present.

Stephen Whale and Wayne Weng, both classical piano performance graduate students at Yale, would often sneak off together, break the rules, and play jazz. I was able to convince them to sneak off and perform at Shoreline Piano!

One of the secret thrills during the series was listening to the musicians audition pianos to play during the performance. Here, Stephen Whale is on the left performing on a restored 1935 Hardman conservatory grand piano. Wayne Weng is on the right performing on a restored 1926 Steinway & Sons Model L grand piano.

The first video shows Stephen Whale & Wayne Weng’s rendition of Billie Holiday and Arthur Herzog, Jr’s “God Bless The Child.”

In the second video they perform George Gershwin’s “Summertime.”