A social media star performed at the Providence train station. Then JVKE showed up.
There isn't normally a piano in the center of Providence Station.
But in "Golden Hour" singer JVKE's recent viral video on TikTok and Instagram, one has been brought in.
The video starts with two girls asking piano player and social media star Emil Reinert, who goes by @emilio.piano online, if he could play the song Golden Hour, which has about a billion streams on Spotify.
When Reinert starts playing the opening lines, JVKE, the Cranston native, just so happens to walk in through the south entrance. With a smile, he starts belting out the song for the small crowd in the train station.
And then saxophonist Angelo Rainone walks into the shot from around the corner and the duet becomes a trio.
Posting the video to Instagram, Reinert wrote, "While waiting for my train to Boston, I decided to play piano.Suddenly a girl asked me to play "Golden Hour." But no one expected that JVKE would join me ... And then a SAXOPHONIST also joined!! Life is full of beautiful surprises."
A person who was at the station when the video was shot told The Providence Journal this encounter was not as serendipitous as the caption would suggest.
But, the video was successful on social media. It's been viewed over 10 million times on TikTok and liked 1.6 million times. On Instagram, the video has been liked 1.8 million times.
Who is Rhode Island's JVKE?
JVKE's birth name is Jacob Dodge Lawson. A songwriter and producer, at the start of the pandemic he started making videos and posting them on TikTok with his mom. They took off in popularity, and he began putting original pieces on the platform, which then took off.
He has been named an MTV Push Artist and spent several months this year touring.
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: JVKE does surprise performance at the Providence Amtrak station. Watch