BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
You remember these guys? Brett Yang and Eddy Chen are the Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University graduates who are breaking the internet with their duo TwoSet Violin.
Making classical music viral, fun, and downright silly, TwoSet has grown into its own institution of a sort, with more than 50 million people tuning in to watch the musicians do their thing.
But now they’re on a different journey, and they’re set to launch what they dub the “first classical crowdfunded international world tour”. Brett and Eddy will use Kickstarter – while simultaneously busking on the streets of Sydney – to raise funds for TwoSet to travel the globe. However, their vision goes well beyond playing a gig or two in a different country. They want to get new audiences “interested, curious, hooked” on classics (seriously no pun intended there, folks) by introducing the sounds to new audiences in their entertaining and comedy fuelled way.
We chat with Eddy about how it’s all going to work.
Update! Brett and Eddy have reached their crowdfunding goal of $50,000. But there’s still time to support the duo, who will add an extra city into their tour for every extra $10,000 raised.
So, you want to tour the world. When did you first have the dream for this project?
Brett actually dreamed of touring the world at a very young age, and it wasn’t until now we see the amazing opportunity to make this happen. We first had the idea at the end of 2015, but it took us a whole year of procrastination before we finally gathered the courage to invent our new show. Then, we had to test it out in Australia to make sure people liked it – and people LOVED it. That’s when we realized we no longer had an excuse to procrastinate – we had to bring this show to the world!
You’re not just going to perform in different countries – you’re out to change the way young people think about classical music. What’s that all about? Talk us through your mission and why it’s important.
We want to make classical music more fun and accessible, but in a way that holds true to the essence of classical music.
Our mission is twofold. Firstly, we want to appeal to those who are not exposed to classical music, and get them interested, curious, hooked. Classical recitals and orchestral concerts can sometimes be too serious and intimidating. By making it funny, entertaining, but most importantly, showing them that classical musicians are just everyday humans too, we can begin to connect with them.
Secondly, we want to inspire our fellow colleagues in the classical music world to not be afraid of being different. Any student going through formal tertiary music education will be heavily educated in the traditions of classical music. These values we still uphold and cherish today. However, the truth is, if we had stuck to the conventional career path, we probably would not have achieved anything close to what we have now. For example, my university teacher, as much as I love and cherish her, once told me that it was too late for me to become a soloist. Now, while TwoSet isn’t exactly ‘soloist’ in the strict classical sense, we did manage to perform a solo concert in the Sydney Opera House! That definitely would not have happened if we didn’t try something different.
I think one of the common objections we see online is that what we’re doing is cheapening classical music. I don’t think so. I think today there is such an abundance of amazing, mature musicians and artists that do carry on the essence of classical music. These people are always going to be there. The way I see it, we are simply providing packaging of classical music in a different way to appeal to people that would otherwise not be interested. By inspiring them and getting them curious, we believe they will then be inspired to learn and explore by themselves the art. We know this because many of our fans have told us that they began practising seriously after being inspired by our videos and concerts!
Why do you feel the weight of the world? Why do you feel it’s up to you to take on the responsibility of changing classical music for good?
I don’t think it’s just up to us. Many people in the industry are recognising the need for change and innovation. In fact, many orchestras and soloists are trying different things out all the time!
I think it’s not so much that change is necessary, but that change is reality. Nothing stays static in the world. Imagine if the world just remained on Bach forever – we would have no Mozart, Beethoven, Mahler or anyone else. But many composers we cherish today were seen as radical and distasteful at the time.
The world is constantly changing. To expect classical music – or even more importantly, how people and the world relate to classical music – to remain the same is simply unrealistic. In that way, I think one of the values that we always try to strive for is innovation. Even with our funny videos, we are always trying different angles, different ways to tell our story, different ways of editing, etc.
In reality, anyone can do what we do, and I’m sure there’s still lots of unexplored possibilities out there – different ways to represent classical music. All it takes is the courage to step outside our comfort zones to try something new.
So what’s do you think is most wrong with the way things are now?
It’s hard to say that anything is ‘wrong’, because wrong is such a subjective term. Rather, I try to tell myself that ‘it just is’.
For example, one of the issues that is often talked about is how orchestras and arts is ‘underfunded’. It’s easy to say that this is what’s ‘wrong’ with the industry, but the fact remains that it is simply how things are. So instead, we try to focus on what we can do within our control to change things.
Our Kickstarter world tour is an example. People around us said it wasn’t possible to do a world tour. We were told by colleagues that if we hadn’t won international competitions by the age of 16, our chances of being soloists were next to none. We were told that creating a world tour ourselves like this was impossible. And the truth is that a tour would require a lot of funding, which we didn’t have. So we looked at our options, and tried to think outside the box. What if we could leverage technology and social media to introduce crowdfunding to classical music? It had never been done successfully for classical music on a large scale – but we believe it’s only by trying new things are we able to innovate and create.
Now, of course, it might not work. And we could complain how wrong it is that people weren’t willing to support classical music. However, again it’s not ‘wrong’. It’s just how it is. We learn from it, and we try something different! I think the point is realizing that we all have dreams and ideals of the kind of world we want to live in, but we need to also respect reality.
So to do all of the above (and eat and sleep, presumably) around the world, you’re going to crowdfund your way there. But you’re tying it into the physical world by busking on the street for the duration of the campaign. Why did you decide to take this angle?
Well we wanted to show just how serious and determined we are about making this work. Something felt off about just making a campaign and a video saying ‘help us!’. The idea originated in a conversation once: we were wondering what would happen if we didn’t hit our funding goal, to which I jokingly replied, ‘We’ll we do it anyway. Nothing’s stopping us from doing this tour, even if it means we have to busk for money and sleep on the streets’. Then we thought how crazy of an idea it would be if we did just that during our funding campaign! Busking is something most musicians relate to, and the imagery of busking itself is somewhat symbolic of the struggling artist. That’s why, despite how crazy and unreasonable the idea is, we eventually became obsessed with it. Plus, it would make one crazy live video experience for our fans!
You’ve chosen for your cases to be closed on the street while busking. Why is this?
Again, this is symbolic. It means we don’t care about the money. What we want is to fund a dream. A vision. And the money donated to the Kickstarter is used purely to fund our mission.
Any plans for not passing out mid-busk?
We honesty have no idea what to expect. We’ve made sure to eat healthy leading up to the busk and get plenty of rest. We will remain hydrated. Moving locations around the city will also give us a little bit of time to rest, as in Sydney you’re not allowed to stay in one busking location for too long.
What can CutCommon audiences do to support you in the best way?
You can support our Kickstarter and pledge online. The money will help fund our international tour, where we can inspire young musicians around the world to enjoy classical music. Otherwise, watching our videos, subscribing and following our social media channels and sharing our content helps us tremendously! We would be nothing without our fans!
