NEW YORK (AP) — The Piano Guys are saying their decision to perform at an event marking the presidential inauguration of Donald Trump is not a political endorsement.
The Utah-based group, which first found fame on YouTube, is among the few acts to agree to play for the Republican’s inaugural celebration.
Numerous musicians have said they turned down offers or changed their minds after initially accepting. Jennifer Holliday was among those who backed away, citing intense criticism from the LGBT community. Others expected to play include the country stars Lee Greenwood and Toby Keith.
Trump will be sworn in Friday.
In a statement issued Monday, the Piano Guys said they weren’t honoring an individual politician but hoping to spread “love, joy and hope.” They added that they hoped “understanding” and “goodwill” would prevail.
Meanwhile, a Bruce Springsteen cover band has changed its tune about performing at a Washington gala the day before Republican Donald Trump’s inauguration.
The B Street Band performs at the Hard Rock Cafe’s 20th Anniversary bash on Tuesday, November 15, 2016, in Atlantic City, NJ. (Photo by Bill McCay/Getty Images
The B Street Band decided to pull out of the Thursday night performance at the New Jersey State Society’s gala.
Band leader Willie Forte said Monday the decision was based “solely on the respect and gratitude we have for Bruce and the E Street Band. That conquers everything else.”
Trump’s inauguration is Friday, followed that evening by inaugural balls.
Springsteen has called the Republican president-elect a “flagrant, toxic narcissist” and has questioned whether he’s competent for the job. Springsteen performed during Democratic President Barack Obama’s 2009 inaugural, and Obama presented him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016.
The B Street Band had drawn jeers on social media from Springsteen fans, accusing the band of abandoning the soul of the musician its made a career of following. As the attention reached national proportions, the band decided it was best to cancel the show.
“This whole thing just got blown out of proportion, which is a shame because (the NJSS) are good, nice people,” Forte said.
Forte said the show had been planned since 2013, noting that the band twice performed for the nonprofit, nonpartisan society at galas to mark Obama’s inaugurals.
The society’s executive director, Nancy Fatemi, said in a statement that the group was disappointed to learn of the cancellation, but “we understand the decision based on all the questions and attention this has brought to the B Street Band.”
Forte said he believes much of the criticism arose because people mistakenly thought the group was going to perform at Trump’s inaugural ball.
The New Jersey State Society brings together those with ties to New Jersey in the Washington area and sponsors networking events. Springsteen is from New Jersey.
Springsteen superfan Gov. Chris Christie and his wife, Mary Pat, are honorary co-chairs of the $225-per-person event. The Republican governor’s office did not respond to a question about whether they would attend. Trump was also invited.
Among those who spoke out against the band’s plans to play Thursday night was Democratic New Jersey state Sen. Ray Lesniak, who last week tweeted: “Shame on the #BStreetBand playing at #Trump’s inaugural. … They’ve profited from #Bruce now they’re abandoning the message in his music.”
“I understand it. We owe everything we have to Bruce,” Forte said last week. “But everything we’ve done because of Bruce has raised millions of dollars for charities.”
The B Street Band is composed of six “hard-working” guys and has been performing Springsteen songs for nearly 37 years, Forte said. It draws its name from the E Street Band, which has backed Springsteen since 1972.

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When an orchestra is in the market for a new music director, any appearance by a guest conductor will inevitably be seen as an audition, although sometimes, to paraphrase Freud, a guest conducting engagement is just a guest conducting engagement. Larger orchestras like to hear their candidates in more than one program, and in visits that last more than a few days, so that the musicians can get a sense of what the conductor is like in rehearsal and in different kinds of works.
How this process works for an orchestra that plays as few classical programs as the Portland Symphony Orchestra – and has few guests – is something of a mystery. Administration and board members could conceivably travel to hear further performances by the front-runners, but that doesn’t give the players the information they need about what it’s like to work with these directors. To an observer, the system seems barely viable. But one way or another, Robert Moody is leaving at the end of next season, and a new conductor will take his place.
WHAT: Portland Symphony Orchestra’s “Chopin’s Second Piano Concerto” program
WHERE: Merrill Auditorium, Portland
REVIEWED: Sunday, Jan. 15
The Portland Symphony Orchestra’s next classical concert will be devoted to the Second Symphonies of Rachmaninoff and Beethoven, conducted by Robert Moody on Feb. 12 and 14, at Merrill Auditorium.
On Sunday afternoon, David Neely conducted the orchestra in works by Britten, Debussy and Chopin at Merrill Auditorium. Neely is a less flashy conductor than Moody, but flashiness is not an important component of a conductor’s toolbag, except to marketing departments, whose opinions should always be discounted. He conducts with clarity, energy and a sense of purpose, and with gestures that can be broad and communicative, but generally seem economical, with little wasted motion.
Neely’s resume suggests that his experience is mainly in opera, but with a hefty amount of contemporary opera to his credit. That is heartening, and it is tempting to see his thoughtfully shaped performances of two 20th century seascapes – Britten’s “Four Sea Interludes,” from “Peter Grimes,” and Debussy’s “La Mer” – as signs of his facility with post-Romantic music of a particularly painterly sort.
Not that either of those works can honestly be called contemporary now. The Debussy, composed in 1905, joined the standard canon long ago, and the Britten, though 40 years newer, is more conservative. It would have been useful to have a bona fide new work on the program, to see what Neely made of it.
Still, his Britten had a simplicity and directness that caught not only the naturalistic description that drives the work – the evocative shimmer of the winds and strings in its “Dawn” movement, the turbulent strings and brass, and percussive thunder of the closing “Storm” – but also the current of tragedy that runs through “Peter Grimes” as a whole.
Neely’s Debussy began puzzlingly. It had the kind of laser-like clarity, in which individual instrumental profiles stand out clearly, that you often hope for in an orchestral performance – but not here. What you want in the opening of “La Mer” is a more ethereal sound that captures the hazy mystery of the sea just before daybreak. Neely’s focus soon softened sufficiently to create that effect, and his accounts of the final two movements – “The Play of the Waves” and “Dialogue of the Wind and Sea” – where Debussy does require the spotlight to fall on individual wind and brass lines, Neely’s performance and the orchestra’s could not have been more magnificently wrought.
After the intermission, Diane Walsh joined the orchestra as the soloist in Chopin’s Concerto No. 2. Walsh presented Chopin as more of a Classicist than a Romantic, partly by pedaling lightly, and partly by playing the solo line with a clarity that focused on its rationality rather than its perfume.
It was an interestingly modern approach, and because she did not jettison the work’s Romanticism entirely – it can’t really be done, Chopin’s lyrical proclivities being what they were – Walsh’s reading also had a buoyant, singing quality. For listeners who craved a more traditional approach to Romantic virtuosity, Walsh gave a dazzling performance of the Liszt-Paganini “La Campanella” as an encore.
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