Brooklyn Duo - Topic

Founded in 2014, Brooklyn Duo has quickly established itself as one of today’s most successful classical crossover ensembles. Through its creative arrangements and live video performances, the piano and cello duo has garnered a huge following, with over 1.5 million YouTube subscribers and billions of streams on platforms such as Spotify and Pandora Radio.

Members Marnie and Patrick Laird met at a chamber music festival in 2006 and were married in 2012. Both worked as professional musicians after graduating from the Juilliard and Eastman schools of music, respectively; Marnie as principal pianist of the New World Symphony in Miami, and Patrick as a founding member of popular cello rock band, Break of Reality. In 2014, on a whim, the couple arranged and recorded two pop covers (Shakira's “Empire” and John Legend's “All of Me”) and released them on YouTube. Amazingly, Shakira noticed the duo’s cover and promoted it to her 130 million-plus fan base, saying: “We're loving Brooklyn Duo's piano/cello cover of #Empire! Great work guys." The boost that resulted from that exposure and the positive response they were getting on YouTube encouraged the couple to continue creating videos. (Other notable shout-outs since then include ones from Taylor Swift, a-ha, and Pearl Jam.)

Today, Marnie and Patrick have released over 100 videos on their Brooklyn Duo YouTube channel and 10 albums of covers, spanning artists from The Beatles to Metallica to Ariana Grande.