‘A top night’: How a 21-year-old audience member saved an Oscar winner’s La La Land concert

It’s a classic underdog dream: being in the audience for a play, football match or concert, then, when someone gets sick, being called up and performing brilliantly.

It happened to Sterling Nasa, a 21-year-old university student, on the opening night of Oscar winner Justin Hurwitz’s La La Land in Concert in Sydney on Saturday night.

Until interval it was shaping as an outstanding performance by the American composer-conductor’s Australian orchestra and jazz band at the 2500-seat Darling Harbour Theatre.

But after an awkwardly long break, Hurwitz, who won best original score and song at the Oscars for La La Land a decade ago, came on stage to say that one of the musicians was too sick to continue. He asked if there was an amazing keyboard player in the audience who could sight-read.

Deep in the audience, Nasa was urged by his friend Scarlett to volunteer.

“She just said, ‘just do it, it’ll be good dad lore’,” he said. “I thought, ‘she’s right’, so put my hand up.”

What followed, after a grateful Hurwitz called Nasa on stage, with the audience buzzing about the unexpected development, could have been from the script of La La Land, the meta musical romance between a jazz musician (played by Ryan Gosling) and an aspiring actress (Emma Stone).

Nasa learnt he was to play the celeste, also known as a bell-piano, for the first time. He said Hurwitz thanked him, asked how he was feeling, then passed him on to the sound technicians and keyboard programmers to set up for the second half. Within 90 seconds of arriving on stage, it was under way.

After a nervous first 10 minutes, Nasa felt he could hold his own. He says he thought, “just stay focused, try your best, you’re not completely out of your depth”.

With Nasa distinctive for being the only musician in a white shirt, the audience applauded enthusiastically when he featured. During a break for the celeste, he flipped ahead of the book to try to learn what was coming up.

“The only one that caught me a little bit off guard was the synth solo in the [John Legend song] Start a Fire,” Nasa said. “It’s a very technical solo that Ryan Gosling plays … I saw it on the page and I thought, ‘I’m not going to be able to sight-read this’, so I took the liberty and just completely improvised the solo.”

Nasa imagined improvising was what Gosling’s character would have wanted him to do.

Hurwitz later admitted that he was glad: “He said, ‘I was worried that you wouldn’t be able to do it or, worst case, that you’d just stop playing and there wouldn’t be a synth solo’.”

When the concert finished, there was a thunderou