Martin Leung
Martin Leung (born October 18, 1986 in Hong Kong ), also known as The Video Game Pianist or The Blindfolded Pianist ( the pianist with the blindfold ) is a pianist who gained international fame for playing music from popular video games .
Life
Leung was born to Japanese and Chinese parents and moved to California when he was three . He took an interest in piano playing when he heard his sister play and began to re-enact simple pieces. His parents eventually let him take piano lessons.
In 1998 and 2000 he won the International Liszt Competition in Los Angeles and came third at the Oberlin Piano Festival in 2002 . In 2003, at the age of 16, Leung performed for the first time at Carnegie Hall , where he performed Mendelssohn's 1st Piano Concerto.
For the first time in 2004 he combined his preferences for piano and video games and created an arrangement of the theme music for Super Mario for piano. The video he made with a friend, in which he played Super Mario blindfolded, was published on July 2, 2004 on eBaum's World.
After the first video, which Leung estimated to be viewed by more than 40 million people, he began performing other pieces from video games, including The Legend of Zelda , Sonic , Halo , Earthworm Jim, and Final Fantasy . When he published more videos with music from video games, they also appeared on the video services iFilm , MSN Video , Google Video , Albino Blacksheep , YouTube and Muchosucko .
In February 2005, he was invited by Tommy Tallarico to play Video Games Live on his planned tour after he noticed Leung's skills and growing notoriety. Previously, he was asked by Tallarico to play at the 2005 Game Developers Conference . In May 2005 he was hired by BradyGames to play at their booth at the E3 game fair . On July 6, 2005, at its premiere at Video Games Live, he played piano arrangements from Final Fantasy, "Prelude" and "One Winged Angel" in front of about 11,000 fans at the Hollywood Bowl . These included Hideo Kojima , Kōji Kondō (via pre-recorded video), Lorne Lanning , Yuji Naka , Martin O'Donnell and Ted Price .
On 12 and 19 November 2006, he led as part of the Video Games Live in Brazil once again a "Final Fantasy" medley as well as the music from Super Mario Bros. (the latter blindfolded) in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo on .
When he performed at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, Texas on October 13, 2005, the audience asked him to give 21 encores.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Archived copy ( memento of the original dated November 15, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original dated May 8, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Leung, Martin |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | The Video Game Pianist, The Blindfolded Pianist |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | chinese pianist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 18, 1986 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Hong Kong |