Perk Up, Pianist!

One of the best hours I’ve ever spent at the Fringe. - The Coast, Halifax

“Her comic timing is as solid as her musical meter. - The Edmonton Journal

Hagen reminds us the beauty of how an honest solo performance can make you so easily fall in love with its performer. - Montreal Rampage

As a storyteller, Hagen has an unusual stage presence: charming in a low-key kind of way, like a friend leaning across a bar table to whisper something important. - Mike Anderson, Mooney on Theatre

For her role, as “classical pianist”, Sarah Hagen was awarded as the BC Touring Council’s 2015 Touring Artist of the Year. With a performance career taking her from Hornby Island, BC to Gothenburg, Sweden, and onto Carnegie Hall as a First Prize Winner in the 2013 Bradshaw & Buono International Piano Competition, Sarah’s favourite audience reviews from concerts remain: "She played the piano" and "It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.” Now Sarah transforms her award-winning role as “concert pianist” into a stand-up, or rather, sit-down piano-filled comedy. “Perk up, pianist!” is a uniquely charming music and storytelling experience that takes you deep inside the world of a touring classical musician.

"Perk up, pianist!" - A sit-down comedy act that will make you "fall in love with its performer."

...Created, written, and performed by Sarah Hagen, with original compositions.

Hagen’s brand of humour is well represented by the dirty (and somewhat goofy) pun in the title (a pun she connects, with apparently characteristic self-deprecation, with her dating life.) She’s an engaging and endearing performer, delivering her lines in a warm voice that contrasts nicely with the silliness of some of her jokes. She’s also, of course, an accomplished concert pianist, and the way in which she subtly times her lines to match the tone and rhythm of the pieces adds to the overall charm of the experience. One of the best hours I’ve ever spent at the Fringe. - The Coast, Halifax

...she played the organ. The church organ. But this is the kind of wordplay and double entendre that she uses to great effect, seeming charming and innocent on the surface — I was occasionally reminded of Jan Smithers’ Bailey Quarters on WKRP in Cincinnati — before revealing the virtuoso vixen underneath. - Local Xpress