Celebrities such as Chris Martin, John Legend and Jennifer Garner are staying at home and making it a little more entertaining for the rest of us by offering free online concerts, books readings and more

Musical Performances

Coldplay

As part of the #TogetherAtHome concert series, an initiative for the NGO Global Citizen, Chris Martin gave the first performance on IGTV. Martin played favourites from Coldplay’s portfolio, alternating between the piano and the guitar, and took time to check out the comments streaming in.

John Legend

John Legend performed his #TogetherAtHome concert on IGTV with his wife Chrissy Teigen at the piano and their children, Luna and Miles, appearing at times. Teigen provided additional laughs by asking her Twitter audience to vote for which of the four outfits she should wear—one of the outfits is a fluffy bath towel that subsequently garnered the most votes. The video is now available on YouTube as well.

Charlie Puth

John Legend passed the baton to Charlie Puth by tagging him in the caption and Puth followed suit with his set, where he played his hits such as One Call Away, performed Carole King and James Taylor’s You’ve Got a Friend, and even gave us a little Mozart.

Andrew Lloyd Webber

Andrew Lloyd Webber asked his fans what musical number, from his extensive repertoire, would viewers want to see him perform at home, and the number one song was All I Ask of You from The Phantom of Opera. In addition to seeing the master of musicals perform at his grand piano, there was a funny moment in the midst when Webber reassured his dog that “it’s alright, it doesn’t come from Cats”. And he started the piece by playing the dramatic opening bars of The Phantom of Opera theme song. Webber followed up with another video featuring another piece from the musical, Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again, and challenged another Broadway great, Lin-Manuel Miranda, to a play-off on Twitter by performing I’ll Be Back from the musical Hamilton.

Storytime for Kids

Josh Gad

After spending all their energy on home schooling, any parent would certainly welcome a moment of rest, if only to grab a glass a wine and figure out how Zoom works. What better person to turn to than Josh Gad, the actor who voiced Olaf in Frozen and Frozen 2. Gad reads a children’s book out loud on Twitter Live every day, as part of his #GadBookClub, and one of the books is none other than Olaf’s Frozen Adventure. All the videos can be found on Gad's Twitter account @joshgad

Jennifer Garner and Reese Witherspoon

Two charities, Save the Children and No Kid Hungry, have joined together for @savewithstories — a new fund to help children in the US that are impacted by the coronavirus crisis. Save with Stories gets celebrities to read children’s books on IGTV—starting with Jennifer Garner, who read The Three Little Fish and the Big Bad Shark by Ken Geist, while Reese Witherspoon read Uni the Unicorn by Amy Krouse.

Topics