Patrick Courtin's friendship with Nico Rhodes began somewhat inauspiciously.
The two met as kindergarteners at Quarterway Elementary School in Nanaimo, B.C. Their mothers are both from France, and they both grew up in Francophone households. Both possess a deep-rooted passion for music that has defined their lives to this day.
Rhodes, however, is much more open to physical touch than Courtin—or at least he was as a kid. One day he hugged Courtin, who responded in a panic by biting his shoulder. Both boys cried, and both French moms got involved.
"My mom talked to me about how it's OK to have boundaries, but it's not OK to do that to your friend," Courtin recalls. "She guided me towards giving Nico a little apology gift of a piggy bank, which he kept for a long time."
Twenty years, to be exact, and they've been friends ever since.
Courtin and Rhodes represent the driving force behind Piano Heist, a colourful and tongue-in-cheek show which aims to prove keyboards can be just as cool as other instruments like guitars and drums.
"Expect the unexpected," Rhodes says. "Expect to hear a lot of music that you know and love, and expect to hear it turned upside down and backwards: whether that's a Brazilian dance tune with two keyboard players conga-lining across the stage, or your favourite Queen tune done as a rhapsody, or your favourite Mozart tune done as a saloon battle. We're just out for a good time."
Planning a heist
The concept of Piano Heist originated in Rhodes' mind roughly a decade ago. He never liked adhering to boundaries of conventional genre and wanted to play all kinds of music on the same night: from Bach to Jerry Lee Lewis to Freddie Mercury. As a drama kid who grew up to write theatre productions, however, Rhodes wasn't satisfied with merely showcasing a series of songs.
He wanted to make people laugh in the spirit of showmen like Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, Victor Borge, Tenacious D, et al.
Rhodes sat on this idea for years, feeling like he didn't have the tools or the bravery to commit. At last he described the dream gig to longtime agent and family friend Margot Holmes, wanting to reset his life after the COVID-19 pandemic. Her first advice: "you need another musician. [Doing it by yourself] is going to be an insane amount of work … it's better if you have someone else on stage you can play off of."
Courtin picked up the phone later that night. He talked things over with Rhodes, and Piano Heist was officially born in 2022.
"I absolutely jumped in head first," says Courtin. "I feel very strongly about the power of silliness, which isn't to say that we don't take the music seriously. My personal philosophy of performing is: don't take yourself too seriously and take the music very seriously.
"We challenge each other to play challenging music that we find and arrange, but we also really try our best to connect with people … choosing what they're already familiar with [but adapting it] in ways they're unfamiliar with, injecting a heavy dose of comedy and silliness."
Music, a universal language
If you're still on the fence about giving Piano Heist a try, know that its frontmen are blessed with a rare level of talent and versatility.
Courtin nailed his first professional gig accompanying a choir at 14 years of age and finished Grade 10 of the Royal Conservatory of Music (RCM) curriculum three years later. Next he went on to teach private lessons, compose scores for films and TV shows and music-direct theatre productions.
"I owe a lot to my family," Courtin reveals. "I listened to my older brother play piano. My parents had me in lessons. I love playing multiple instruments, although piano was kind of always my main love. As I got older, my parents encouraged me to study music and [I got a Bachelor’s Degree of Music in Jazz Studies at Vancouver Island University]. Piano Heist feels like a culmination of all that: I get to play a lot of music I really like with a guy I've known my whole life."
Rhodes, meanwhile, is multi-talented in multiple fields. He speaks English, French, Spanish, Esperanto (an international auxiliary language created in 1887 by L. L. Zamenhof) and is currently working on Japanese. That linguistic toolbox is nearly as diverse as his resume: with 40 stage musicals, 400 original compositions, four original musicals and two symphonic pops concert arrangements to date.
"My love of languages runs parallel to my love of music," explains Rhodes, who in 2019 was granted Nanaimo’s Emerging Cultural Leader Award. "My mom is a polyglot and a performer, and I was really inspired by her stories of travelling and connecting with people. Language is the gateway for connecting with people—as artists, we connect through music on stage and I've always loved that feeling of shared humanity.
"If you think of music as a language, it's a universal language. There's some universal beauty to all styles of music, to all elements of performing. The feeling I get playing in a blues jam at a dive bar, watching people dance and sing and smile, is the same feeling I get playing with a symphony and choir watching people quietly enjoy themselves. All this stuff is interconnected and it matters."
Piano Heist visits Whistler on Jan. 18 at 8 p.m. in the Maury Young Arts Centre. Tickets are available at showpass.com/awl-piano-heist.
