Igudesman & Joo 易高文和朱亨基Aleksey Igudesman and Hyung-ki Joo are two classical musicians who have taken the world by storm with their unique and hilarious theatrical shows, which combine comedy with classical music and popular culture. Their clips on YouTube, to date, have gathered over 28 million hits, and the duo has appeared on television in numerous countries. Equally comfortable performing in classical concert halls, as well as in stadiums in front of crowds of 18,000, their collective dream is to make classical music accessible to a wider and younger audience.
Many of classical music’s biggest names, such as Emanuel Ax, Joshua Bell, Janine Jansen, Gidon Kremer, Mischa Maisky, Viktoria Mullova, and Julian Rachlin, have joined them in their musical sketches. Aleksey and Hyung-ki have also teamed up with actors, such as John Malkovich, and former James Bond, Sir Roger Moore, on several occasions in aid of UNICEF.
Besides touring “A Little Nightmare Music”, they also perform “BIG Nightmare Music”, with symphony orchestras, and lead their workshop “8 To 88 - Musical Education for Children of All Ages” at universities and music schools around the world, leaving students inspired and confident to break new grounds for their own musical journeys.
Igudesman & Joo can be seen in several films, including their own “Mockumentary”, “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Classical Music”. On New Year’s Eve, 2011, at the Vienna Konzerthaus, with the help of 100 violinists from all over the
world, Igudesman & Joo set the world record for the most “Dancing Violinists” performing together on stage. The world record was conceived and produced by the duo in aid of UNICEF.
Aleksey Igudesman Violin
Aleksey Igudesman was born in Leningrad at a very young age. He has never won any competitions, mainly because he has never entered any. During his studies at the prestigious Yehudi Menuhin School, he read the entire plays of Bernhard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, and Anton Chekhov, which didn’t improve his violin playing, but made him feel foolishly somewhat superior to other less intellectually endowed, yet harder practising colleagues. After studying with Boris Kuschnir at the Vienna Conservatoire and being told many times by many people that they were rather worried about his future, he embarked on a successful career playing, composing, arranging, recording several CD’s for BMG, and working in Hollywood with Academy Award® winner Hans Zimmer.
Aleksey Igudesman writes a lot of music. Often he goes to bed writing and gets up writing. He sometimes feels a little insecure about his music, although it is published by Universal Edition. In fact, his psychiatrist tells him that he is insecure about a lot of things. Aleksey is not so sure about that.
Aleksey Igudesman plays with a bow made by the Boston-based bowmaker, Benoit Roland, and on a Santo Seraphin violin from the year 1717, which is kindly loaned to him by ERSTE BANK.
Hyung-ki Joo Piano
Hyung-ki Joo was born. He is British, but looks Korean, or the other way around, or both. He showed his first signs of a sense of comedy whilst nappy-changing and shortly thereafter, showed his love for music when his parents would find him at the record store listening for hours to everything from Mozart to Bee Gees.
He studied at the Yehudi Menuhin School, where he discovered that he was among child prodigies and was convinced he would be kicked out of school. In fact, he was not kicked “out” but kicked “around” by teachers and fellow students, such as Aleksey Igudesman. After these painful experiences, Joo invented a new type of piano playing known as “Karate Piano”.
Hyung-ki has small hands, (but only hands small), and therefore finds some piano repertoire quite difficult to play. Anyway, even with this small hindrance, he happily performs chamber music, recitals, concertos, his own compositions, and anything else that includes a piano part. Besides composing, performing, laughing, brushing his teeth at breakneck speed, and writing comedy, Joo’s passion for teaching has led him to develop his own personal style of workshops.
