LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: Hello. Attempting to earn a living in classical music is, let’s face it, a tough path that rarely pays off even for the most talented. Throw in trying to make a career in classical music comedy, and even the most supportive parents are going to grit their teeth.
But that’s exactly the risk that two classical violinists from Brisbane have taken … but they are killing it internationally … and racking up millions and millions of views on social media.
VANESSA HUGHES, ABC CLASSIC: TwoSet Violin are two boys from Brisbane, brilliant violinists. Incredibly funny people who are giving classical music a long overdue kick up the rear.
(Walking down hallway at Lincoln Centre, New York)
Eddy: Turn left, first dressing room
BRETT YANG: We are in the midst of a world tour right now. We're doing ten cities in the USA.
EDDY CHEN: We would have never imagined ten years ago that we would be able to do these big world tours, selling out these big concert halls.
Eddy: I don’t have my proper blender so am just using a tissue.
BRETT YANG: We're in the David Geffen Hall in Lincoln Centre in New York. We're about 30 minutes away from the show, I'm super excited.
(Violins warming up)
BRETT YANG: The warm-up kind of consists of just panic practice. Anything that we feel like needs a bit more work last minute.
Usher: Five minutes.
BRETT YANG: Normally in a classical music concert is like a sea of white hair our audience is kind of the opposite actually. Now it's people that have never heard classical music before.
VANESSA HUGHES, ABC CLASSIC: Their celebrity status is epic, most top of their game classical musicians would be green with envy as to their reach, you know, millions of subscribers and billions of views.
(YouTube video playing)
Are you ready for the TwoSet workout?
Down bow, up bow, down bow, up bow…
YENA CHOI, FRIEND & VIOLINIST: I don't think anyone really believed that being a YouTuber was even an option, let alone violin comedy.
YENA CHOI, FRIEND & VIOLINIST: But they decided they wanted to forge their own path and you know they've put everything on the line, really. Given up everything they know, and nothing's really stopped them since.
TITLE: Taking a Bow
(TwoSet walking on stage)
BRETT YANG: Normally when you walk on the stage in a classical music concert it's just (polite clapping) silence.
You bow, you tune, it’s on. And the pressure's on.
Eddy: Before we begin... (laughter)
Who here has heard of game called violin charades?
EDDY CHEN: We're not deliberately setting out to break the rules like a rebellious teenager.
(Siren sound on violin)
EDDY CHEN: Our mission is kind of to be that gateway that brings people into the world of classical music in a more fun, relaxed, entertaining way.
HILARY HAHN: They are very good violinists. You can't use humour about a very specific craft unless you know everything about it, it just wouldn't work.
BRETT YANG: This was something that we didn't intentionally plan to do, but it was very obvious that it became our purpose, and it's something we felt really comfortable doing. I tell my past self like thanks for taking the risk and just going for it. And whatever happens, you're going to have a ride of your lifetime.
(Brett chatting with his parents in Mandarin)
BRETT: I was born in Taipei, Taiwan and then when I was 12, my whole family moved to Australia. My first thought was spiders, snakes, all the insects and bugs that could kill you.
(Young Brett playing violin)
CATHY TUNG, BRETT’S MOTHER: Brett started the violin when he was five years old and he loved the violin. I always encouraging him and bring him to see the orchestra and to join the music camp.
ERIC YANG, BRETT’S FATHER: And we always educate to them you need to survive in Australia, you know, we don't we are not a rich family, we are very ordinary like everybody else, so you need to be a strong, stronger than the other people.
BRETT YANG: So, this is the room where my Mum placed everything together. I would never do something like this. When was this? 2008, Senior Strings Championship. So, this was kind of my Eisteddfod phase.
BRETT YANG: I think practice ironically, really made me love music because I also think if it was too easy, I may not have appreciated it as much.
Down here I actually have my, very first violin that I played on.
It really comforted me knowing that if you just practice in the right way, without a doubt you will get the results you want.
EDDY CHEN: I was also born in Taiwan and then we came to Australia when I was eight. My mum thought it would be better for me and my sister's future.
BONNIE CHEN, EDDY’S MOTHER: Oh look, you are so cute, so young, only maybe 10 years old.
EDDY CHEN: I actually started the piano first when I was five years old and I started learning the violin when I was six.
When I first started playing, I hated practising, my Mum was the one who really forced me to keep practising.
BONNIE CHEN, EDDY’S MOTHER: I don’t harsh to you, I’m always very kind.
EDDY CHEN: Yes, tough love.
EDDY CHEN: I remember when I was young, she put a timer on the piano and said, ‘If you don't practice 30 minutes, you can't eat dinner tonight.’
BELLE CHEN, EDDY’S SISTER AND PIANIST: Me and Eddy were both really dedicated. I could always hear his violin, which was really loud when we were children, and I was like, oh, he's practising again. It's like, you know, violin is quite piercing.
EDDY CHEN: This is the report card from Grade 7. I demonstrated everything except for life skills, no life skills but everything else was good.
EDDY CHEN: When I was around 12/13, I really started to fall in love with classical music. I discovered a CD recording of popular classical music like Debussy, and it really clicked with me and resonated and I found myself so deeply curious and intrigued and I wanted to explore more.
BELLE CHEN, EDDY’S SISTER AND PIANIST: I accompanied him when he was doing his auditions, when he was doing his competitions, Eisteddfods, lessons as well. I was involuntarily his pianist for like the entire childhood.
(Brett and Eddy playing Mario Cart)
Brett: Oh wow, I’m doing so bad.
EDDY CHEN: I actually met Brett in maths tutoring. It's not music related at all. And it's like the most Asian possible way to meet.
BRETT YANG: And you know, it was like a three-hour math tutor, tutoring class on a Friday evening and no one wants to go tutoring on a Friday evening.
Brett: Aww, I'm catching up.
Eddy: Oh, damn. You're actually getting kind of close.
EDDY CHEN: We just started talking at the back of the class. Oh, somehow we got onto the topic of playing violins. ‘Oh, you play violin?’ ‘Oh, me too, I play the violin!’
BRETT YANG: The next day we had the Queensland Youth Symphony Orchestra.
EDDY CHEN: And then I just hear kind of down ten metres away. It's like, ‘Hey, it's you from math tutoring.’ I look up and it was Brett, and since then we became good friends, yeah.
EDDY CHEN: By the time I was 15, 16, I really started considering possibly doing music as a career. And then my mom kind of did the 180 where she’s like you should stop practising so much. You should study more because you know you're going to become a doctor, right?
BELLE CHEN, EDDY’S SISTER AND PIANIST: I feel like for my mum and my father, they came from backgrounds where their parents couldn't offer them the same things they were offering us. And so I think there was a natural instinct for them to want to make sure the kids are going to be okay and they're going to make the right choices.
BRETT YANG: I knew I wanted to do music when I was around year 11, year 12. I just couldn't imagine myself being in an office all day, that's all.
ERIC YANG, BRETT’S FATHER: Music as your career, we a little bit worried about your future because you need to be a very, very, very good like America's Got Talent. Australia's Got Talent.
CATHY TUNG, BRETT’S MOTHER: But once he decide we are support him, that's very important.
BRETT YANG: After high school we studied at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music, majored in violin.
ASS. PROF. MICHELE WALSH, FORMER TEACHER: Brett and Eddy were two of our brightest and best students. They wanted to do well and excel in everything.
Michele: Good to see you. Oh, come on in.
Eric: Oh, wow. This is a new couch.
ASS. PROF. MICHELE WALSH, FORMER TEACHER: And they wanted to come out the best possible musician they could be.
Michele: The thing that surprised me the most is that don't take this the wrong way, I never found you that funny.
Brett: We took our lessons very seriously. Like we took practising very seriously.
ASS. PROF. MICHELE WALSH, FORMER TEACHER: Both Brett and Eddy came in hoping to be soloists. I think that's the dream that many people have.
BRETT YANG: Usually soloists are like the top 1% of performers. It's not just top 1%. It's like the 1% of the 1% that gets to have a solo career.
EDDY CHEN: When you're young and you don't know where your limits are, it is, in my opinion, a good and beautiful thing to dream big and be optimistic.
But I can see in other ways it manifests in kind of an unhealthy fear of imperfection, and I myself went through this.
EDDY CHEN: Because I wasn't processing that stress, because I was kind of just like, no, just practice more. The answer to everything is practice more. I don’t think I realised how much of a, it's kind of obsessive state I had gone into during that time.
When I was 20, I actually started developing pain in first in my right arm, I remember here.
ASS. PROF. MICHELE WALSH, FORMER TEACHER: It was difficult because he had this big competition and he also was going to play a concerto at the Conservatorium with the orchestra. So there was a lot of pressure on him at the time, and he was doing all the right things. And suddenly it seemed to progress from one arm to the other. And it was getting very, very worrying.
EDDY CHEN: And that same pain sensation spread to my legs and that's when I really freaked out and panicked.
BRETT YANG: Even to this day, thinking about it feels so unreal. Like he was in a wheelchair, and he couldn't move.
EDDY CHEN: So the neurologist told me what you have is essentially psychosomatic pain. It is a type of pain where there's no real physical injury in your body, but the pain sensations you're feeling is very real.
EDDY CHEN: And he said I just needed to push through the pain but keep telling myself it normal and its fine. It was the scariest thing to do but at that point I feel like I had not much left to lose, I was willing to try anything and I was shocked that within two days I was able to walk.
BRETT YANG: I remember it was crazy. I still remember you messaging me. He's like, ‘I can walk’, I'm not, what do you mean you can walk?
EDDY CHEN: The neurologist said in my case it was probably triggered by emotional stress. And I realised part of that, perhaps looking back, was because I had gone against my Mum's wishes to be a doctor. I really felt that I needed to prove myself and make it as a musician.
I truly know that my Mum had only the best intentions for me and she loves me so much um, but that I guess, was really digging at me beneath the surface. It kind of started that journey of self-reflection for me. And it was just such a pivotal point in my psychology and my relationship with music.
YouTube video host: The other day someone asked me to describe my editing process.
EDDY CHEN: In the early stages when I got sick I kind of took in video editing just as a hobby. I'd be watching YouTube tutorials, it was around the time where Gangnam Style was the first video to hit 1 billion views.
BRETT YANG: And we saw this. Wow. No way we should make videos. This seems so cool. And that was when we first started experimenting with videos.
EDDY CHEN: In the beginning we didn't really think about it at all, we just we were just exploring, we were having fun. It's like a kid with a new toy.
BRETT YANG: It was just so cringey, I can't look at it anymore.
BRETT YANG: When we graduated from the university I went to the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and Eddy stayed in Brisbane to play with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra and during that time, Eddy and I were separated in different cities. That didn't stop us, we still kept making videos.
BRETT YANG: And these skits were drawn from our experiences as a classical musician. And the very first one that went viral was video where I imitated a violinist dancing.
Brett: We didn't realise that there were so many musicians out there that shared the same experiences - going through auditions, going through competitions as a musician, the nerves, all the practising we have to do.
We were being relatable.
SHAUN O’BRIEN, FRIEND AND MUSIC PRODUCER: I saw the videos coming out, the views creeping up, I kind of thought, oh wow, they're really serious about this.
BRETT YANG: Around that time, Eddy joined a national violin competition and he got into the semi-finals.
EDDY CHEN: I wanted to keep growing and keep pushing my potential, I think that's why I was still doing competitions even though I had the job. And I didn't get through to the finals and that's fine. But I remember what really bothered me was the adjudicators feedback, one of the lines was just not enough eye contact with the pianist.
To me that felt like such a trivial point to judge a musician on. And that is supposedly meant to decide your career as a violinist.
We work so hard, we practice so hard, but just the system was very harsh.
BRETT YANG: And that’s when he had the realisation that, you know what? I'm going to stop letting other people dictate what my career is going to be like. I'm going to have to take it into my own hands.
And, I remember Eddy messaged me, he goes, ‘Brett, I booked a concert hall. We're going to do a concert.’ I was like, oh, oh wow, it's serious now.
Performer: What’s this? They wanna play like Pagan-ai-ni?
EDDY CHEN: We wanted our concert to carry the spirit of our online content, it was just how to translate 30-second short videos into a 90-minute concert. We had no idea how to do that.
BRETT YANG: Yeah.
Eddy: I feel this amazing power surging through me
Brett: What is it?
Eddy: I don’t know, I… (plays violin)
Brett: That’s Paganini!
Eddy: Whoa, we can do this.
Brett: We can play Jingle Belles now.
ASS. PROF. MICHELE WALSH, FORMER TEACHER: When they did their first concert, I really didn't know what to expect. I had a feeling that I would probably be shrinking and cringing a bit and that was not the case.
YENA CHOI, FRIEND & VIOLINIST: I wasn't sure if their concert was going to be more of a concert or more of the comedy aspect. But it was the perfect combination of both and yeah, it was a hit, everyone loved it. And I think from that moment they got a taste of what it's like to actually get that feedback and get that reaction.
EDDY CHEN: And so we took the leap of faith and we both quit our jobs in orchestra and tried to commit full time to YouTube.
(Eddy and Brett in front of camera)
Eddy: Welcome back to another episode of TwoSet Violin.
BELLE CHEN, EDDY’S SISTER AND PIANIST: When Eddy and Brett decided to become YouTubers I wasn't surprised because I feel like my brother is of such a character that if he wanted to do something, he would make it happen. My mother was slightly concerned just out of fear, ‘is he going to be okay?’
ASS. PROF. MICHELE WALSH, FORMER TEACHER: It just didn't make sense to me. I thought, well, how are you going to make money out of doing these video recordings?
(TwoSet Violin Kickstarter video)
Brett: We are asking for your help to help us become the very first Crowdfunded Classical Music World Tour.
YENA CHOI, FRIEND & VIOLINIST: They'd come up with this idea of a world tour that could be crowdfunded, again another crazy idea I didn't think was going to be possible.
BRETT YANG: So we decided, for us to raise money for our tour we're going to do a busking marathon.
Eddy: This is Pitt St Mall calling. If you are in Sydney come Pitt St Mall.
BRETT YANG: We're going to busk non-stop to and we're going to sleep outside. We had to keep doing it until we reach our funding goal of $50,000.
EDDY CHEN: Oh thinking back at it again this was just young, hot-headed naivete.
Brett: Your turn.
Eddy: We're so lucky we actually hit our funding goal within five days because I don't think we would have lasted physically much longer.
BRETT YANG: So that initial amount of money covered a few cities and the ticket sales were made from that went to the next few cities.
Eddy: Hey guys this is Day 7 in London.
BRETT YANG: No one knew this. We just promised we were going to go to these ten cities, but we didn't know if we could even really make it.
EDDY CHEN: It was just really fun and it opened up a lot of opportunities for us as we were able to meet different people, that's how we met Hilary, is because of the First World tour.
EDDY CHEN: Hilary Hahn is probably one of the most legendary violinists in our time today.
HILARY HAHN: When I met them back in, I guess, 2018 I think we were fangirling fanboying kind of and then we got that energy out and just started having conversation.
EDDY CHEN: We convinced her to shoot a video with us doing a Ling-Ling workout.
BRETT YANG: Ling-Ling is this fictional character that represents all the ideals of the perfect prodigy. Something you'll never attain and something that your parents will always compare you to.
(TwoSet Violin YouTube video)
Eddy: Not like Ling-Ling who practised 40 hours a day and become doctor at 5 years old.
HILARY HAHN: And the Ling-Ling workout is a series of challenges that are kind of ridiculous.
That are kind of impossible.
Eddy (to Hilary): What do you think about this combo?
(Hilary plays Bach at doubled speed)
BRETT YANG: We never thought someone like Hilary would do this. It was one of the most unbelievable things that happened. The fans were shocked but also really excited in a good way.
HILARY HAHN: I think that video has brought a lot of people into classical music because it's, it's so wacky, but it's also so interesting. It’s just fun, fun for everyone.
EDDY CHEN: So last year in 2022, Hilary was doing a concert in Sydney and so we really wanted to go and watch her perform live.
BRETT YANG: And then she messaged and reached out ‘hey, I was thinking, maybe you would like to jump on stage with me for the encore?’ I was thinking, well, we can't say no (laughs).
HILARY HAHN: I am lucky enough to be in their work, sometimes in their zone, and I wanted to invite them into my zone.
EDDY CHEN: If you told 18-year-old me, who was still very optimistic about being a soloist, that you would one day share the stage with Hilary Hahn, he would have been like, get out of here, you know?
HILARY HAHN: The audience looked at them a certain way when they came out, because they know them from the videos that they make. But by the end, I felt like the audience saw them as performing violinists.
SHAUN O’BRIEN, FRIEND AND MUSIC PRODUCER: It was about two years ago Eddy approached me with an idea to make K-pop but Classical.
SHAUN O’BRIEN, FRIEND AND MUSIC PRODUCER: K-pop is it's just a genre of pop music obviously originated from Korea, It's always very bright, very bouncy.
EDDY CHEN: And so we came up with this idea, that these five composers decided to form a modern day pop boy group.
EDDY CHEN: B to the SM is an acronym for Bach, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich and Mozart. And it was really fun kind of mixing in different iconic works from each composer and like kind of weaving that into like a pop format.
During that song we also had a little cameo from Paganini.
EDDY CHEN: Paganini was an Italian violinist who was known to be one of the world's most famous violin virtuosos. In fact, he was so good at the violin that people believed he might have sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his violin skills.
SHAUN O’BRIEN, FRIEND AND MUSIC PRODUCER: So we were working on a follow up piece for B2SM and then along comes a K-pop group called Blackpink, who released a track called Shut Down, and in it they sampled classical piece by, La Campanella by Paganini.
(Crowds cheering at Blackpink concert)
VANESSA HUGHES, ABC CLASSIC: In the K-pop world, you've got these supergroups like Blackpink, we are talking tens of millions of followers. And they're not just followers, they're super fans, super bands with super fans. They will die on hill for you.
SHAUN O’BRIEN, FRIEND AND MUSIC PRODUCER: In the Shut Down piece, the violin line in La Campanella is just repeated the whole way through no variations.
BRETT YANG: What Blackpink do is incredible but just from a classical music standpoint we just felt like there could have been more to it than just that one or two bars.
BRETT YANG: And we thought, okay. Why don't we get Paganini to react to their video.
Eddy as Paganini: I wrote the entire La Campanella! Entire concerto! Why the entire time you only use two bars?
BRETT YANG: And to follow that up, we decided to go, well, why don't we try to make a music video out of this?
TwoSet Violin (singing): I sold my soul to the devil, you sold yours to your label.
SHAUN O’BRIEN, FRIEND AND MUSIC PRODUCER: It was a cheeky parody but it was really well intentioned.
BRETT YANG: Honestly, at the beginning when we posted the video, we thought. You know, there might be a bit of backlash, but it won't be that bad, right? Classical musicians understand what we're trying to say. For the first 12 hours, I was like, oh, there was no hate at all.
EDDY CHEN: And then the next morning I woke up and it just went ballistic.
Eddy: So, it's been a year. Let's see how if we can find the comments from a year ago.
Brett: ‘And so I hope you break your fingers and never play music again.’
VANESSA HUGHES, ABC CLASSIC: And it just created this massive K-pop feud. And I think in probably an unfunny way, it was an example of TwoSet getting seriously trolled, you know, by die hard Blackpink fans.
Eddy: ‘Do you know? Do you know how to sing? Your voice is the ugliest thing I've ever known.’
Brett: During that frenzy they started spamming everything, all our channels like YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter.
EDDY CHEN: They were basically berating not just us on comments, but anyone they thought were vaguely associated to us.
Brett (reading from news website): ‘The Singapore Symphony Orchestra has been flamed on social media by BlackPink fans.’
BRETT YANG: Some of the unhappy K-pop fans tried to cancel a really important concert that we were going to do with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra. It was the celebration of achieving 4 million YouTube subscribers on our channel.
EDDY CHEN: Actually, I remember we were a little bit worried when that first happened.
BRETT YANG: So that was really nerve wracking.
Thankfully, the Blackpink and Paganini drama died down and the concert went ahead.
This concert was a very special moment.
I played the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto.
(Brett on stage playing Mendelssohn on violin)
BRETT YANG: It was kind of at that moment when I realised that dream I had as a kid did come true for that moment in time, playing a notable concerto with a professional orchestra.
CATHY TUNG, BRETT’S MOTHER: We are very proud. Brett and Eddy, they do a very good job.
ERIC YANG, BRETT’S FATHER: People love it no matter whether you are, eight years old or you are 80 years old, they all love it, to see what the ordinary boy, two boy, play such beautiful violin.
EDDY CHEN: At the end of the concert, I played La Campanella Paganini as a special encore, which was fun.
Brett: We’re going to play La Campanella with more than two bars.
EDDY CHEN: One of the really cool things with TwoSet for us was being able to see that, hey, you can make it and grow an audience and tour around the world to thousands of people. But not have to go through this kind of very highly competitive, streamlined, traditional path that they have laid it out for you. I mean, still massive respect for people that do make it through that way. But I think it's really cool just to know that there are other options.
EDDY CHEN: I feel like we're both very grateful, and I guess it's just, I'm really glad it paid off.
BRETT YANG: Yeah, we're very lucky.
EDDY CHEN: Yeah.
BRETT YANG: Yeah.
Introduced by Australian Story presenter Leigh Sales
It’s not as though Brett Yang and Eddy Chen planned to turn their act, TwoSet Violin, into a global disruptor of classical music.
They barely had a plan at all.
But when they threw in their coveted jobs as violinists with two of Australia’s leading orchestras in late 2016, they knew they wanted to do classical music differently.
Blending their impressive performance talents with comedy, the pair began to make videos for YouTube, inspired by their experiences of the highs and lows of life as a musician.
They’ve now amassed millions of social media fans, are playing sellout concerts around the world and bringing new audiences to classical music.
ABC News feature article | How two Brisbane violinists became global disruptors of classical music