Billy Joel Surprises 400 New York City High School Students, Gives Brief Piano Performance, Answers Students’ Questions [VIDEO]

Billy Joel gave an assembly of 400 students at the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in Queens a pleasant surprise on Thursday when he performed two songs and hosted a question-and-answer session, according to Rolling Stone.

Joel appeared with Tony Bennett, who founded the school in 2001 through his Exploring the Arts Program, which supports 14 schools in New York and will start three more in Los Angeles later this year, according to The Associated Press.

Bennett and his wife, former teach Susan Crow, kept Joel's appearance a secret since March.

The 64-year-old New York native performed "New York State of Mind" and "She's Got A Way" on different pianos and took questions in between from the students, the first of which was "What do you think is one of your biggest mistakes?"

"My biggest mistake was signing a lot of contracts that I didn't know what they were about," Joel said. "I signed away a lot of my rights - record royalties, publishing rights, copyrights - and it took me years to get that stuff back."

Joel granted one male student's request for a hug, which elicited cheers from the crowd, signed a student's yearbook and signed an autograph for a female student's mother.

The singer joked and had fun with the students throughout the session. When one student asked him who Joel's favorite collaborator was, he replied, "Elle Macpherson. That was a good collaboration." Joel dated the Australian supermodel in the 1980s.

According to The Associated Press, one female student asked Joel if he would play "Uptown Girl," her favorite song.

"It sounds like crap without harmonies and drums," Joel said.

At that, the girl said she would be his harmony amid laughter from the crowd.

Joel never graduated high school but received a diploma 25 years later. He said Thursday that his time at school affected him and fondly recalled his favorite moment: cutting class to go to the auditorium and play the piano.

"I had a good chorus teacher and he encouraged me to become a musician. That's my greatest memory of school - an adult said, 'You should consider becoming a professional musician,'" Joel said. "I'd never heard (that) before in my life and that kind of changed my life."

Joel has made several of these types of appearance in recent years, mostly at colleges, including this visit to Vanderbilt University that went viral.