Last weekend, AK Barnett-Hart and I were both in Colorado visiting family. We decided to meet up and play some impromptu music together. We decided to go with Ellie Goulding’s “Love Me Like You Do” song from the movie 50 Shades of Grey because it had a great melody. We then found the music and arranged our own violin and piano version. AK’s phone ran out of memory so the ending is cut off. Here’s the video: https://youtu.be/UELTOd-Fhw8
I first met AK through her younger brother, Colin, who was a high school classmate. Colin and I both competed in piano, shared the same piano teacher, and sometimes performed duets together (Colin was the better piano player). I would run into his older sister, AK, during our practices. AK, like Colin, was a music prodigy. Oh, they also have an older brother, Adam, who is a professional violinist. Because AK was a few years older than me, we never overlapped in high school. She went on to study at Juilliard (arguably the best music school in the world) and then Harvard. AK was someone I looked up to.
AK and I reconnected earlier this year, when she reached out after hearing good things about Enplug, my startup. It was also during this time that I was reading New York Times Best Seller, The Big Shortby Michael Lewis. The popular non-fiction book documented the 2008 financial crisis and the mechanics of the collapse. At the end of the book, Lewis acknowledges that the book was based on the undergraduate thesis of none other than…AK. While she wanted to learn more about how I started Enplug, I couldn’t wait to hear how she told Wall Street what’s up.
On my next trip home to Colorado, I invited her, her mom, and my piano teacher (who is AK’s close family friend) over for lunch. We caught up on what we’ve been doing in the past 10 years. We promised each other that the next time we were both in Colorado, we’d play some music together. We had just an hour to come up with our variation so forgive our quirky interpretations here and there. What do you think about our piano and violin duet?
Nanxi Liu 