Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Good popular and classical songs for a piano gig?

Here is an incomplete list of pop and classical songs I am considering doing for an upcoming gig. I am mostly playing for an older audience.

Please add to it, I am in need of some suggestions!!!

You can suggest popular classical songs too!!

Chariots of Fire
Linus and Lucy
Memories
Liebestraume
Flight of the Bumblebee
Phantom of the Opera

Fur elise and Fantasy impromptu are really good songs.

Tony -

What pop and classical pieces do you already have in your repertoire?

If your aim for "popular" is "people who might have heard piano before":

Chopin Nocturne 9/2
Debussy Clair de Lune
Bach Prelude in C

maybe even Chopin etude 10/12

but yeah, whatever is already in your repertoire is your best bet.

youcould also play etude 10/1, that'll dazzle them!

Yes to Fantasy Impromptu.

Think that Fur Elise might be too cliched at this point.

I listed them at the beginning of this post.

Good suggestion on Clair De Lune. Perhaps the Chopin Nocturnes as well.

What about pop songs? Is there something obvious I'm overlooking?

People like show tunes and all kinds of famous pop songs, but I'm not really hip anymore

LOL. Don't forget Claire de Lune, might as well get that song out of the way.

Edit: Damn, not quick enough.

I'd think that pop songs that use the piano are the best ones to transfer to solo piano (I assume you aren't singing too ).

The ones I play for friends who don't dig classical are Bridge Over Troubled Water, Imagine, Candle in the Wind and Your Song.

As for classical, don't forget Chopin waltzes (Op.64/2, Op.70/2, Op.69/2 are the easier slower ones) and mazurkas (Op.7/1, Op.30/3, Op.59/2). And Brahms waltzes (Op.39/2 & 15).

Dvorak Humoresque, most people in an older generation might even know alternate words to that one

Of the same style might consider Stephen Foster Beautiful Dreamer.

(Here's a little known fact: the subject of Dvorak Humoresque involves death)

Thats appropriate, because by the time I'm done playing it, everyone has fallen asleep or died

Interesting suggestions, thank you!

Keep them coming, I need as much material as possible, I have to play for about 20 hours.

Just improv for a lot of it; that should burn up some good time.

Oh wow. Dan Coates has several volumes of music that are fairly good.

And I thought my upcoming 4 hour gig was long!

Cathy

Nobody mentioned Joplin rags yet?

There're enough there to last two hours (especially if you take all repeats ).

Everyone loves The Entertainer and Maple Leaf Rag, but Solace, Bethena and Elite Syncopations are all good too.

And, if you're good at arranging, Piazzolla or other people's tangos will get your listeners up on their feet . Especially Libertango. Failing that, settle for Albéniz's Tango, nice & easy.

Grieg's Lyric Pieces (e.g. Erotik ) and Mendelssohn's Songs without Words (e.g. Op.19/1, Spring Song), and Fauré's equivalent Romance sans paroles Op.17/3 will all get your elderly audience nostalgic over the good old days.....

Fantasie Impromptu is just as clichéd. It's just that fewer people are capable of playing it.

20 hours? You're kidding - right?? What kind of gig is this??

Also - exactly how OLD is this "older audience."

Tony, you can play Satie's "Vexations" and fill up nearly ten hours with it, maybe more if the tempo is reduced. It is only one page of music, the challenge is not to lose count of the repetitions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gImDzmNuEDA