Many of us look to concerts, festivals, and celebrity appearances for talent, and it can indeed be found in abundance in these large settings. However, there is also a vast wealth of impressive skill and talent to be found in the everyday people who we can bump into at any point in our lives.
Enter Ella, who is a prime example of such a person. A YouTuber, known as Andrei Piano, was filming himself standing by Sir Elton John’s Piano in St. Pancras International Station in London, UK when Ella came over and offered to play the piano. Little did he, and the world, know that she was about to cover a complex and beautiful piece: “Interstellar” by Hans Zimmer. Check it out in the video below:
The interaction between Anrei Piano and Ella was simple: an invitation to play the piano for his YouTube video, and that’s it. Ella then sat herself down and began to perform Zimmer’s timeless classic that both perfectly fit the song’s original film (Interstellar), and also somehow managed to match the mood of a bustling London station. It takes great skill to perform such a complex track, and Ella did an amazing job.
Hans Zimmer is a German-born composer and is known as one of the greatest and most influential musicians of all time, with his work being used in countless productions and movies across the globe. His thrilling film scores and ability to create swells, ebbs, and flows in tandem are truly unique, and he is responsible for some of the world’s most iconic soundtracks. For example, the Pirates Of The Caribbean soundtrack, which you can watch a live version of here:
Interstellar is a dystopian space-based film that is centered around a group of astronauts who travel through a wormhole near Saturn looking for a new home for mankind. In the film, humanity is on the brink of collapse from a catastrophic blight and famine, and it is up to this group of astronauts led by Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway to find a chance of survival for the human race. It’s a tough film to watch due to its highly emotional moments, but it’s noted as one of the greatest films of all time.
Back to Ella’s performance, it’s clear that she was massively influenced by Hans Zimmer. It is revealed to us through the YouTube video’s caption that she is a self-taught pianist who has only been playing for three years at this point, which is an incredible feat in and of itself. Then we have to consider that she performed this long and complex piece flawlessly without even looking at any sheet music, which shows that she truly has a gift for playing the piano.
The atmosphere for this Interstellar cover was also oddly fitting. As Ella begins to play, an announcement on the train station’s tannoy system goes off and, if we use our imagination, it sounds like we’re all about to take off into space like astronauts ourselves.