Elise at a recent Piano Karaoke event
Piano Karaoke
with Elise MacDonald
First Thursday of the month
7:30 pm
Requested donation: $3
Love karaoke or group sing-a-longs? Pop, folk, Broadway tunes? Then try live piano karaoke!
Bring along lyric sheets (or an excellent memory of the lyrics) of your favorite classic, well-known songs and we'll play them in your best key. We can also use our laptop and WiFi connection to pull down the lyrics from the internet, right on the spot.
We'll have a microphone set up --- you can sing with the mic, or without. You can sing solo, do a duet with a friend, or lead the crowd in a sing-along of a well-known tune --- your call.
Here's some pictures from our first go-round on November 5, 2009:
...and more from November 22, in the gallery.
Here are some examples of piano karaoke from a recent Save the Music fundraiser we had at the Studio (we were lucky enough to have Bryan Thomas join us on drums that evening):
Chris sings Tiny Dancer by Elton John:
Bill sings the classic oldies tune Tiptoe Through the Tulips:
Finally, Angela and Rony sing Abba's Dancing Queen:
All of these tunes (and many more!) were performed on the spot, with no rehearsal between the singer and the pianist, and no sheet music. It's edgy, it's in-the-moment, it's fun!!!
If you've got questions about a tune you'd like to choose, please call Elise at 603-562-5179 or email her at studio99nashua@gmail.com. But feel free to just surprise us --- as long as it's a well-known tune, chances are it'll be a great choice! We also have a lot of sheet music songbooks you can review; even if we don't know a song well, we can read it from the sheet music.
Coffee, tea, chilled soft drinks and waters, snacks and chocolates are available for purchase.
Elise's grandmother, Laura, was a pianist in the silent movie houses of New York City in the 1920s during her early 20s. While Laura never had the opportunity to learn to read music, she was an extremely accomplished, self-taught pianist nonetheless --- playing complicated on-the-spot arrangements of popular tunes of the day as well as 100% improvised incidental music while accompanying silent films. Laura was Elise's first (and perhaps most important) music teacher and the two constantly played piano-four-hands, always by ear, from the time Elise was 4 or 5 years old.
Thanks, Nanna...
