The Piano | |
---|---|
Genre | Music competition |
Created by | Richard McKerrow |
Presented by | Claudia Winkleman |
Judges | Lang Lang Mika |
Country of origin | United Kingdom |
Original language | English |
No. of series | 2 |
No. of episodes | 13 |
Production | |
Running time | 60 minutes (inc. adverts) |
Production company | Love Productions |
Original release | |
Network | Channel 4 |
Release | 15 February 2023 – present |
Related | |
The Great British Sewing Bee The Great Pottery Throw Down |
The Piano is a televised British music competition show that aired on Channel 4 since 15 February 2023 and is hosted by Claudia Winkleman with Lang Lang and Mika as judges.
On 14 July 2023, it was announced that the show was recommissioned for a second and third series alongside a Christmas special and a documentary on the first series winner Lucy Illingworth. [1]
Amateur musicians are invited to publicly perform on street pianos in the concourses of major UK railway stations. Performed pieces include classical standards, contemporary chart hits, and original compositions, with some performers accompanying themselves with vocals. [2]
For the first series the competitive element was kept secret from the performers — the judges observe the performances from a nearby room, selecting one performer from each location to perform at an end-of-series concert at the Royal Festival Hall. [3]
Series | Episodes | Premiere | Finale | Winner |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 5 | 15 February 2023 | 15 March 2023 | Lucy Illingworth [4] [5] [6] |
2 | 7 [1] | 28 April 2024 | TBA | TBA |
3 | 7 [1] | TBA | TBA | TBA |
The first series aired from 15 February to 15 March 2023 and ran for five episodes. The heats were held at St Pancras railway station, Leeds railway station, Glasgow Central railway station and Birmingham New Street railway station with the final being held at the Royal Festival Hall. The series winner was Lucy Illingworth, a young blind girl who is also autistic. Illingworth went on to perform at the Coronation Concert and a commemoration of Fanny Waterman. [4] [5] [6]
The second series aired from 28 April 2024. [7] The first heat was at Manchester Piccadilly. [7] New episodes are airing weekly on Sunday evenings on Channel 4.
The Guardian awarded the first episode four stars out of five and asking if it could be considered "Bake Off for pianos". [2] [8] [3] The Mirror considered the show to be "brilliantly simple" and life-affirming. [9] In contrast, the I considered the show to be "aimless fluff". [10]
Gordon Angus Deayton is an English actor, writer, musician, comedian and broadcaster.
Alan Gordon Partridge is a comedy character portrayed by the English actor Steve Coogan. A parody of British television personalities, Partridge is a tactless and inept broadcaster with an inflated sense of celebrity. Since his debut in 1991, he has appeared in media including radio and television series, books, podcasts and a feature film.
Adam Offord Buxton is an English actor, comedian, podcaster and writer. With the filmmaker Joe Cornish, he is part of the comedy duo Adam and Joe. They presented the Channel 4 television series The Adam and Joe Show (1996–2001) and the BBC Radio 6 Music series Adam and Joe.
Claudia Anne Irena Winkleman is an English television and radio presenter, writer, and journalist. She has presented various television shows for BBC, including Strictly Come Dancing (2010–present), and The Traitors (2022–present). She previously hosted the Saturday mid-mornings show on BBC Radio 2.
Strictly Come Dancing is a British dance contest show in which celebrities partner with professional dancers to compete in mainly ballroom and Latin dance. Each couple is scored by a panel of judges. The title of the show is a continuation of the long-running series Come Dancing. The format has been exported to 60 other countries under the title Dancing with the Stars, licensed by BBC Worldwide, and led to a modern dance-themed spin-off Strictly Dance Fever. The Guinness World Records named Strictly as the world's most successful reality television format in 2010. The series is currently presented by Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman. Bruce Forsyth co-presented the series with Daly until 2014.
Film '71 – Film 2018 was a British film review television programme, which was usually broadcast on BBC One. The title of the show changed each year to incorporate the year of broadcast until its cancellation in December 2018.
The Forward Prizes for Poetry are major British awards for poetry, presented annually at a public ceremony in London. They were founded in 1992 by William Sieghart with the aim of celebrating excellence in poetry and increasing its audience. The prizes do this by identifying and honouring talent: collections published in the UK and Ireland over the course of the previous year are eligible, as are single poems nominated by journal editors or prize organisers. Each year, works shortlisted for the prizes – plus those highly commended by the judges – are collected in the Forward Book of Poetry.
Martha Catherine Kearney is a British-Irish journalist and broadcaster. She was the main presenter of BBC Radio 4's lunchtime news programme The World at One for 11 years.
Michael Holbrook Penniman Jr., known professionally as Mika, is a singer-songwriter born in Beirut, Lebanon, and raised in Paris and London.
Barunka Sarah G. O'Shaughnessy is a British actress, writer and producer. She is best known for playing Sacha Merrion on Bo! in the USA and for her appearances in The Mighty Boosh.
Rebecca Lucy Taylor, also known by her stage name Self Esteem, is a British musician, songwriter and actress. First known as one half of the band Slow Club, she launched a solo career as Self Esteem with the single "Your Wife" in 2017, followed by the albums Compliments Please in 2019 and Prioritise Pleasure in 2021. A multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, songwriter and theatre composer, she is winner of the 2021 BBC Music Introducing Artist of the Year Award and Prioritise Pleasure was nominated for the 2022 Mercury Prize. From September 2023 to March 2024 she performed the lead role of Sally Bowles in the West End production of Cabaret.
So Solid Crew are a British UK garage and hip hop collective originating from Battersea, London, which achieved wide success in the early 2000s. The group consisted of many members, the most notable being Asher D, Lisa Maffia, Harvey and Romeo. So Solid have been credited for being pioneers in the UK music scene. By turning UK garage from a dancey-genre to one that was darker and more MC-oriented, and gaining mainstream success, they inspired London youth to experiment with their own darker sounds, leading to what would become known as grime music.
Lucy Rose Parton is an English singer-songwriter. Her career as a musician began in 2012 with her first studio album Like I Used To and she has released five more since, the latest of which, This Ain't The Way You Go Out, was released in April 2024. She founded her own record label, Real Kind Records, in January 2020; the record label is a partnership with the UK record label, Communion.
The Great British Sewing Bee is a BBC reality show that began airing on BBC Two on 2 April 2013. In the show, talented amateur sewers compete to be named "Britain's best home sewer". A spin-off of the format of The Great British Bake Off, the programme was presented by Claudia Winkleman for the first four series, with judges Patrick Grant, May Martin, and Esme Young. After a three-year hiatus, the series returned in 2019, with Joe Lycett taking over as presenter. The sixth series began airing on BBC One in April 2020 and the seventh began airing in April 2021. Sara Pascoe took over as presenter from series 8, which began airing in April 2022.
Chimerica is a 2013 play by the British dramatist Lucy Kirkwood. It draws its title from the term Chimerica, referring to the predominance of China and America in modern geopolitics. The play premiered in London at the Almeida Theatre and was directed by Lyndsey Turner. Turner's production received several awards and was well-reviewed. A Channel 4 four-part drama of the same name based on the play was released in 2019.
Liam Williams is an English comedian, actor and writer, known for his wry poetic presentation style. He was nominated for Best Newcomer at the 2013 Edinburgh Comedy Awards and for Best Show at the 2014 awards.
Lewis Arnold is an English director working in television. He is best known for the shows Time, Sherwood and Des.
Strictly Come Dancing returned for its sixteenth series with a launch show on 8 September 2018 on BBC One, and the first live show on 22 September. Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman returned as hosts, while Zoe Ball returned to host Strictly Come Dancing: It Takes Two on BBC Two. Shirley Ballas, Darcey Bussell, Craig Revel Horwood, and Bruno Tonioli returned as judges. On 20 October, actor Alfonso Ribeiro stood in as a guest judge to cover for Tonioli.
Samuel George Campbell is an Australian stand-up comedian and actor. He won the Melbourne International Comedy Festival Award in 2018 and the main prize at the Edinburgh Comedy Festival in 2022.
The Unique Boutique is a British television show first broadcast on Channel 4 on 24 July 2023. The series' hosts design bespoke outfits for a variety of guests who live with various disabilities that are not served by mainstream fashion.