Piano Man – Celebrating the music of Billy Joel
Billy Joel’s exceptionally strong songbook took on a new life in Piano Man with freshly penned orchestrations by Nicholas Buc. Ahead of what will undoubtedly become a nationally loved show, Adelaide got to see it first.
Whether it’s a crowded bar or a wide-open concert stage, the heart and soul of any Billy Joel song is the piano. As a writer and performer, it is where all his inspiration and artistry begins.
But what would it be like to substitute the Piano Man’s tool of trade for the full strength of a symphony orchestra?
The Adelaide Symphony Orchestra’s Piano Man concert supplied a resounding answer in the affirmative.
It is a bigger, more ambitious show than one might have imagined. Under Mark Sutcliffe’s direction (he also did last year’s Burt Bacharach concert with the ASO), a top tier of interstate vocalists and backing musicians cruised into Adelaide to play newly penned orchestral arrangements by Nicholas Buc – whose talents we last saw when he conducted in July’s Hans Zimmer concert.
Buc’s arrangements are superbly done. Wisely, he doesn’t recompose Joel’s music so much as to elevate what is already present and implicit in the original piano part of each song, carefully handing out each strand to different sections of the orchestra to provide extra richness and expressive colour.
Vanessa Scammell was right in with Buc’s approach, conducting the ASO with uncontrived classical elegance, always maintaining focus on the vocal line while adding easy power to build-ups and lushness where it counted.
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And what excellent quartet of Aussie vocalists there are in Piano Man. Coming from a wide diversity of experience, they were able to reach into every stylistic avenue of Billy Joel’s material.
Phil Burton, a widely respected pop singer known for his founding role in Human Nature and appearances in Dancing With the Stars, gave immediate power to rockier numbers such as ‘A Matter of Trust’. His raw, gutsy delivery came closest to matching Joel’s pumping stage presence in this hard-hitting song from The Bridge, his tenth album.
Coming from a music theatre background, Josh Piterman proved a most versatile performer who could hold his ground too. Having taken the title role in The Phantom of the Opera in London in 2019, Joel was right up his alley. He was equally gutsy in the driving beat of ‘Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song)’, the opening track on The Stranger, one of Joel’s finest albums.
Alinta Chidzey, another of Australia’s most in-demand music theatre artists, also showed great versatility. She stopped every breath in the Festival Theatre with an intimately personal version of ‘Just the Way You Are’, giving Joel’s first US Top 10 more poignancy than ever. Silky sax solos by Damien Hurn plus warm, tasteful string layering in the orchestra made this one of the concert’s sassiest transformations.
Later, Chidzey later revved up the energy to party heights in ‘You’re only Human (Second Wind)’, helped by a terrific rhythmic snap from the ASO’s brass section.
A young, similarly versatile artist as well as being a singer-songwriter in her own right, Jess Hitchcock had no less to offer. Her tender, pared-down simplicity in ‘Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel)’, along with a darker hue in the accompanying strings, gave this song all its emotional truth. Joel wrote it for his daughter Alexa when she was seven years old to explain what happens when we die.
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Bravely accompanying herself at the piano (and the only singer to do so), Hitchcock earned huge kudos in ‘And So It Goes’ in the second half.
Everywhere else, Jack Earle was the concert’s highly polished keyboard whizz, mainly playing grand piano but occasionally switching to synth. But in the hymnlike chords of this gorgeous song from Joel’s 1989 album, Storm Front, Hitchcock was perfectly wonderful.
Beginning this concert is a ‘Billyture Rock ‘n Roll Medley’ that quickly zips through some of Joel’s more memorable themes, first in the orchestra by itself and then with the singers. It’s slightly confusing sequence, and its breathless speed caught the singers off-guard a little. But their intonation settled soon enough once the song-list got underway.
‘Turn the Lights Back On’ (2024) was particularly special, because it’s Joel’s first single in 17 years and because Burton sang its pleading words with heart and soul.
‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ was another highlight. Taking the tempo back and dividing up the lyrics, Burton and Piterman had this sizzler well in hand. Joel himself rarely performs his ‘novelty song’ (as he describes it) on account of its extreme pace. At 888 words, it crams in 15 times more text than Mozart’s ‘Queen of the Night’ aria.
‘Piano Man’ comes at the very end, but it is worth the wait. Burton again excelled in this all-time favourite, helped by Earle’s expert finger-work on piano and harmonica-emulating synth.
After a couple of encores – ‘The River of Dreams’ (with that familiar hook line ‘in the middle of the night’) and ‘Uptown Girl’, Joel’s biggest selling hit – there was a smile on every face.
Piano Man allows one to enjoy all these numbers anew and does fine justice to one of the greatest of songwriters.
This is a review of ASO’s Piano Man on 7 February at the Festival Theatre in Adelaide.