Alicia Keys’ two piano performance at the 61st Annual Grammy Awards this year sparked a notable Facebook buzz. That may be an indicator that audiences still enjoy dueling piano performances. Ragtime piano players began dueling in the late 1890s. Performers would compete to see who’s faster and better.
Over about a fifty-year time span, Pat O’Brien’s Bar in New Orleans and Dallas’ Alley Cats have transitioned the live entertainment to sing-alongs with audience participation. Performers play by request most any genre of songs past and present.
Today there are more than 200 dueling piano clubs across the United States. Oklahoma City’s Bricktown features a few professional piano dueling live performance clubs. Michael Murphy’s Dueling Pianos performances has been in business for about ten years. Their shows rotate three professional piano players who live all over the country and travel to Oklahoma to perform each week.
One of Michael Murphy’s featured artists is Sami Davis. Sami studied Audio Production with a vocal emphasis at the University of Colorado, Denver. She has continued studying voice for nine years. Sami said she stumbled into live piano performance about four years-ago. “My love for music and playing music is what keeps me playing,” she said. Michael Murphy’s has more than 15 artists who perform on stage three nights a week.
What’s becoming more popular is off stage dueling piano performances for corporate events, private parties for weddings and birthdays, and for performing arts centers, concerts, and festivals.
Alicia Keys’ performance at the Grammys brought the nostalgia of dueling pianos to center stage and helped remember an extraordinary African American pianist and jazz vocalist, Hazel Scott.
Variety News 
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