Tags
ABC News, CATcerto, Elizabeth Fais, Guinness World Records, Klaipėda, Klaipėda Chamber Orchestra, Lithuania, Matt O'Donnell, Mindaugas Piečaitis, Music, Nora the Piano Cat, The Today Show, Wild Animals, YouTube
No, this is not a joke!
“CATcerto” is a serious orchestral piece by Lithuanian composer Mindaugas Piečaitis, in collaboration with Nora, the Piano Cat. I am not even kidding.
Mr. Piečaitis was inspired to write a concerto after seeing one of Nora’s YouTube videos. For the performance of CATcerto, Mr. Piečaitis conducts with Nora, the guest soloist, appearing in a pre-recorded video projected onto a large screen behind the orchestra.
The world premiere of CATcerto was performed by Klaipėda Chamber Orchestra in the Klaipėda Concert Hall in Klaipėda (Lithuania) on 5th June, 2009. Since then, CATcerto has been performed in cities and countries around the globe.
Nora, the Piano Cat
You might have seen one of Nora, the Piano Cat’s YouTube videos all ready. Or maybe caught one her performances on Wild Animals or The Today Show.
ABC News, with Matt O’Donnell, brought Nora into the spotlight back in 2007. Back then, her YouTube video had 600,000 views. Now her videos have over 25,000,000 views and the numbers keep on climbing.
In 2010, CATcerto was in the Guinness World Records as the first concerto ever written for a cat. Eat your heart out Garfield!
Still don’t believe me? Watch the following video of the entire performance of CATcerto.
Elizabeth Fais 
Purrfect!
^–^
= o =
That cat plays better than my son, and I’m guessing his lessons were a lot cheaper. Go figure…
😉
Nora’s human plays the piano. I think she took lessons from her human
😉
Oh, I have to show this to the 13 year-old! She’ll love it being the cat lover and piano student that she is. 🙂
Check out Nora’s the Piano Cat web site (link in the post). I’m sure she’ll love that!
Cool! 🙂 Neat piece of music… I think Nora should be credited the ‘very fat piano cat’ (but then, the best cats are, they have their owners – er – servants well trained to bring food…)
Her plumpness may very well be the result of her thousands of fans showering her with culinary delicacies. 😉
It’s amazing how Nora really *enjoys* playing the piano. She wasn’t trained to perform. Her human plays the piano, and Nora just started imitating her one day. Kind of sweet.
It is. I am sure that, cats are self-aware and much smarter than we usually think, all round – just yesterday I was out for a walk and a Burman whose servants live a few doors up from my house saw me arriving from a distance, decided I was its bestest of all friends – trotted over as I walked up, sat down and yelled for attention, in the way that Burmans do. The bad news is I am horribly allergic to cats (we had to get rid of our supremely cool black-and-white one), so I had to decline the invitation to make a fuss of it.
Cats (like most animals) understand us much better than we understand them. Which begs the question: Who’s the stupid one in the equation?
🙂