\u201cJumping into that concert in Sydney, and having an earpiece and seeing all this, was a little bit crazy,\u201d says Nasa with well-mannered modesty, \u201cbut we somehow got through it.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Pianist](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/1785755414_704_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Conductor Justin Hurwitz with pianist Sterling Nasa performing the soundtrack of \u201cLa La Land\u201d at the Greek Theatre.<\/p>\n
(Ariana Drehsler \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n
Nasa is sitting backstage at the Greek Theatre between rehearsals, preparing to make his Los Angeles debut. After that remarkable incident, an international feel-good news story, Hurwitz invited Nasa to fly out and play the entire concert at the anniversary screening here, in Griffith Park, where many of the film\u2019s iconic scenes were shot.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s playing better than most of the professional pianists I\u2019ve worked with,\u201d says Hurwitz, who regularly conducts \u201cLa La Land in Concert.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s nailing it,\u201d Hurwitz explains during a break. \u201cThose Sebastian solos, the ones that Ryan Gosling plays in the movie, he\u2019s playing those as perfectly and cleanly as I\u2019ve heard them in a very long time. Very few of the pianists I work with around the world \u2014 and they\u2019re all great professionals \u2014 but very few of them play it this well in sync with the picture.\u201d<\/p>\n
Saturday\u2019s rehearsals took place under a scorching sun. Half of the assembled musicians played on the film\u2019s original soundtrack; star trumpet soloist Bijon Watson can even be seen wailing in the Lighthouse jazz scenes. Sitting in the midst of these veteran L.A. sessions players, Nasa looked focused but confident, his youthful face belying his easy, fleet-fingered playing.<\/p>\n
![\"Pianist](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/1785755414_333_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Pianist Sterling Nasa heads to the stage Saturday after intermission during the 10th anniversary show featuring a full orchestra and jazz band performing the \u201cLa La Land\u201d soundtrack at the Greek Theatre.<\/p>\n
(Ariana Drehsler \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n
He flew in from Sydney on Thursday, leaving a rainy Australian winter for a California heat wave. The initial jet leg was rough, he says, but he had mostly adjusted by Saturday. Hurwitz took some one-on-one practice time with him before the orchestra arrived, and Nasa had also been practicing his part for six weeks.<\/p>\n
Nasa (an Anglicized Lebanese name) has been playing piano since he was 3. His parents encouraged his musical education, and he\u2019s performed enough in bands and local musical theater not to suffer from stage fright. He also plays the bagpipes, and has played with 300 bagpipers for 10,000 people at the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo at Edinburgh Castle.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve always had a bit of an inkling that I\u2019d love to be a musician,\u201d Nasa says, \u201cor if I can find some opportunity in the artistic world, or in musical theater or in music, that I would love too. But I did sort of get the \u2018real\u2019 degree.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was finishing his studies in international relations at the University of Sydney when the cosmic moment happened in May. His friend Scarlett was the one who enthusiastically pushed Nasa\u2019s hand up when Hurwitz, panicking, asked if anyone in the audience was an \u201camazing sight reader.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI owe so much of this to her,\u201d Nasa says. \u201cI really probably would not have done it.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/1785755415_736_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
The 10th anniversary show of \u201cLa La Land\u201d featured a full orchestra and jazz band.<\/p>\n
(Ariana Drehsler \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n
He played the entire second half of the concert that night. (The hired pianist fell ill and had to leave.) Nasa says he thinks Australians were inclined to root for an underdog \u2014 \u201cthe audience that night really just wanted it to work\u201d \u2014 but for this big L.A. moment, \u201cI think now there\u2019s obviously a bit more of an expectation.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the twilight concert began, Hurwitz addressed the sold-out Greek Theatre \u2014 a lively crowd filled with yellow dresses \u2014 and surprised them by announcing that the \u201ckid from Sydney\u201d was here to play the entire show. Nasa absorbed his ovation, then took his bench in the middle of the orchestra with a little monitor displaying the movie on his piano.<\/p>\n
He played the melancholy strains of \u201cMia and Sebastian\u2019s Theme,\u201d a solo piano motif that Gosling\u2019s character plays throughout the film; he accompanied their flirty \u201cCity of Stars\u201d duet, and he performed all of Sebastian\u2019s acrobatic jazz solos \u2014 many of them meticulously synced to corresponding shots of fingers on a keyboard.<\/p>\n
![\""La](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/1785755415_541_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
\u201cLa La Land\u201d plays on the screen at the Greek Theatre while an orchestra and jazz band accompany the film.<\/p>\n
(Ariana Drehsler \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n
The film itself was projected over the stage, but monitors on either side showed Nasa and the other live musicians. A young woman in front of me watched his hands, perfectly aligned with Gosling\u2019s, with her jaw dropped. Nasa never missed a note, and he received another outsized ovation after the rousing end credits.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve thought a lot about opportunity, and how there\u2019s so much talent in the world,\u201d says Hurwitz, reflecting on the moment in Sydney. \u201cAnd there\u2019s also so much lost talent in the world, talent that just isn\u2019t realized. And I just love that there was this talented guy, who\u2019s a great musician, but he was in school studying something else \u2014 because he didn\u2019t know if he could or should go into music. And then there was this opportunity, and he took it, and he showed everybody \u2014 and he showed himself \u2014 that he can do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nasa says he\u2019s not sure what he\u2019ll do now that he\u2019s graduated, but one thing he\u2019s interested in is composing for musical theater \u2014 or possibly scoring films.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Here\u2019s to the ones who dream. The anthemic thesis of \u201cLa La Land\u201d \u2014 the Ryan Gosling\/Emma Stone…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":573193,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[18152,18442,146,878,203530,259209,85,46,28344,130041,42663,79169,259211,20672,259210,259208,25436,2711],"class_list":["post-573192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-audience","tag-concert","tag-entertainment","tag-film","tag-greek-theatre","tag-hurwitz","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-kid","tag-la-la-land","tag-moment","tag-musician","tag-professional-pianist","tag-ryan-gosling","tag-sebastian-solo","tag-sterling-nasa","tag-sydney","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573192\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/573193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}