News / Joe Jenkins

Playing the piano in a hot air balloon basket

By Martin Booth  Monday Jun 14, 2021

It was the culmination of more than 18 months work as Joe Jenkins went up and away from Ashton Court in a hot air balloon with a piano squeezed into its basket.

Joe is a YouTuber from Bristol, currently with 3.66m subscribers to his channel, Joe Jenkins Music, which has seen him play the piano in locations as diverse as outside Buckingham Palace, in the middle of a river and Broadmead.

This time, the 20-year-old played the theme from Disney movie Up, which features a house carried off on an adventure by thousands of balloons.

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“The Up theme is one of my favourite Disney themes of all time so for a long time I have been wanting to cover it in some way or form,” said Joe in the introduction to his latest video.

“But it would be far too easy to just sit there and play the theme song so I thought I have to play this in the style of Up.”

Joe’s pilot for the day is Pete Dalby from Hotwells business Phoenix Hot Air Balloons, with the pair (and the piano) flying in a Taittinger balloon that is a regular at the Bristol Balloon Fiesta.

Joe, Pete and the piano – photo: Joe Jenkins

Main photo: Joe Jenkins

Read more: Joe Jenkins: the teenage YouTuber from Bristol with three million subscribers

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