Better known by her Twitch moniker Angels_Piano, Angeles is an unconventional streamer, changing the world of streaming with her highly stylized performance art pieces that combine virtuoso piano talent with amateur-style vocals and a gorgeous display of set design and costuming. “Twitch is for everyone, not just gamers. I want people to know that,” she said in a phone interview with Lifewire. “Come to my show; It’s like the Cheers bar. It’s like a group of friends welcoming everybody. I love it!” Angeles is not new to the world of online music-making. She got her start on the now-defunct music collaboration website BandHub, where she posted videos of her playing the piano to an adoring community. She moved to Persicope shortly after, taking donations, before eventually finding her home on Twitch. Today, she plays to an audience of thousands taking cover requests, improvising, and playing original music.
Argentine Dream
Born and raised in Argentina to a comfortably middle-class family, the Twitch streamer fondly recalls her time in the land of silver. She was the youngest of four girls and it was here that both her love for music and motto was birthed. Starting off on a tiny Casio keyboard playing music by ear, she would spend hours learning the keys. Her family recognized her talent from an early age. However, she recalls her parents seeing her music as little more than a hobby. Not something to financially support her life. Despite her successes, such as joining Argentinian music conservatory Conservatorio Nacional Superior de Música at the age of 9, Angeles said her mother and father—a beauty guru and an insurance agent, respectively—had more insular ideas of work and success. “[My parents would] always have this limiting belief that I would be poor if I dedicated my life to music. So, when I finished music school I didn’t touch a piano for 10 years,” the streamer said. “I came to the States, went to New York, and worked at a hedge fund. No one even knew I could play piano.” Now they know, though getting there proved to be a slow burn. Starting in 2017 after a moderately successful stint on now-defunct Twitter platform Periscope, she would stream on Twitch to an audience of two, practicing piano. Her talents would slowly but surely bring in ever-increasing audiences looking for a reprieve from the muck of Twitch, or just a nice performance.
Destiny Fulfiled
The typical Angels_Piano stream is a full-on performance art piece of a two-hour mash-up of playing by ear. Traveling through the ages she goes from the rocking ’50s to the angsty singer-songwriters of the ’90s interspersing original songs with improvised segments for an uncanny display of technical skill and musical genius. Conventional wisdom suggests Twitch is a space for young adults and teenagers, but not Angels_Piano. She prides her community on being a space for adults in a sea of young people rigmarole and shenanigans that color people’s perception of the streaming platform. Adventurous, fun, and tight-knit are words she uses to describe the community she’s cultivated on the platform, where she plays songs to audiences as they work, clean, or even sleep. She cherishes the ability to touch people on such a deep level through music. This, she said, is part of why she left her career in finance to become a full-time streamer, breaking conventions of what it means to be a professional musician. “I play everything by ear, so I don’t need to know a song. If I’ve heard it I can play it and then a lot of people start crying telling me how beautiful it is. People will say something like ‘sunset on the beach’ or ‘walk in the forest with a little bit of snow’ and with (those descriptions) I will create a song or melody for that stream creating original compositions on the spot on stream,” she said. Twitch recognized the unique talent of Angeles and the community she was bringing to the platform from her days as a Persicope streamer. Before she even earned her partnership she was inducted as a Twitch Ambassador in 2019, joining an illustrious group of 37 other inductees that year. The future for Angels_Piano is an expansive one. She’s conquered the world of music with front-page performances on the world’s largest live-streaming platform, and next she’s hoping to let the world see her personality with an upcoming podcast series. Angeles is a multitalented performance artist with a community waiting for her to take her next steps into superstardom.
