NY Daily News: Pharrell Williams Crashes Amp Up NYC Concert

The "Happy" singer and 11-time Grammy winner surprised a group of Amp Up NYC® students while they were covering Williams's Hidden Figures songs at a school concert. 

December 15, 2016

Eleven-time Grammy-winning singer-songwriter, rapper, and producer Pharrell Williams crashed a performance by Amp Up NYC students at the Equity Project, a New York charter middle school, on December 9. Greeted with a deafening roar from the crowd, the “Happy” singer shocked the starstruck teens on stage while they were performing songs from his new film, Hidden Figures

“The emotional intensity that I saw on that stage, I don’t remember seeing before in my life,” said Williams. 

Amp Up NYC, a nonprofit partnership between Berklee College of Music, Little Kids Rock, and New York’s Department of Education, has revitalized music education in NYC, expanding the district’s modern band programs to nearly 70,000 K-12 students in more than 600 city schools.