Aleksey Igudesman and Richard 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 15 million hits, and they have appeared live on television in several countries, including an exclusive interview for CNN. Equally comfortable performing in classical concert halls, as well as in stadiums in front of crowds of 18,000, their unified dream is to make classical music accessible to a wider and younger audience.
Aleksey and Hyung-ki met at the age of twelve, at the Yehudi Menuhin School, in England, and since then, have remained strong friends and writing partners. In 2004, following in the footsteps of luminaries such as Victor Borge and Dudley Moore, they created their first groundbreaking show, "A Little Nightmare Music". Since then, they have performed with major symphony orchestras around the world and have played at some of the world's biggest stages and festivals.
Many of classical music's biggest names, such as Emanuel Ax, Janine Jansen, Gidon Kremer, Mischa Maisky, Viktoria Mullova, and Julian Rachlin, have joined them in their zany musical sketches, and recently, they performed exclusively for one of classical music's greatest conductors, Bernard Haitink, who thereafter said, "Igudesman and Joo played at my 80th birthday celebrations. I nearly died laughing. I'd like to invite them back for my 85th, but that might be considered reckless...Great musicians, great fun."
Their performances reach well outside of the classical field and last year they toured Europe with legends of the pop world such as Robin Gibb (Bee Gees), Midge Ure (Ultravox), co-creator of Live Aid and Band Aid, Tears for Fears, Simple Minds, and Kim Wilde.
Individually, Aleksey Igudesman has worked with musicians ranging from Academy® Award winning Hollywood composer, Hans Zimmer, to multi Grammy® Award winning vocalist, Bobby McFerrin. Richard Hyung-ki Joo, has worked with Academy® Award winning composer, Vangelis, and was chosen by Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, Billy Joel, to arrange and record Joel's classical compositions on a CD, which reached no.1 on the Billboard Charts. Aleksey and Hyung-ki have also collaborated with the actor, Roger Moore, on several occasions for UNICEF.
Later this year, the German TV Broadcasting Channel, ZDF, will air a documentary, or rather "Mockumentary" on the Igudesman & Joo story.
ALEKSEY IGUDESMAN
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 (incidentally, he is a violinist) 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, and arranging for his string trio, "Triology". They recorded several CD's for BMG, worked in Hollywood with Academy Award winner Hans Zimmer, and performed with Bobby McFerrin, Julian Rachlin, Janine Jansen, and other people who are less famous, but just as great.
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, and tries to compensate for it by being rather extrovert. In fact, his psychiatrist tells him that he is insecure about a lot of things. Aleksey is not so sure about that.
Back at school he met his "IGUDESMAN & JOO" partner, Richard Hyung-ki Joo. After a few initial small differences, resulting in several people holding them both back from smashing chairs and music stands on each other's heads, Joo offered Igudesman some fish and chips, which he simply could not refuse. This in turn led to collaboration over many years, which culminated in the creation of "A Little Nightmare Music", a show they tour together making people laugh.
After Gidon Kremer heard them several times, he wanted to join in the fun, so to speak, and asked them if they would like to do something together. The answer was obvious and "Being Gidon Kremer" was born.
Ever since then, Igudesman & Joo have been writing and re-writing the script for the show a million times and are rather glad to have finally settled on something they all seem to like. (Well, until the next time Gidon comes up with 10 new ideas of how to turn everything upside down!)
Aleksey Igudesman plays on a Santo Seraphin violin from the year 1717, which is kindly loaned to him by ERSTE BANK, (the nicest, sweetest, most charming, and best-looking bank in the world) since he doesn't have the cash to buy his own and they don't mind him doing a bit of advertising for them.
Richard 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. (Although the two are never to be confused, Hyung-ki is often heard singing "Don Giovanni" in the style of Barry Gibb).
He started piano lessons at the age of eight and a half and two years later won a place at the Yehudi Menuhin School. There, he discovered that he was among geniuses and child prodigies and was convinced he would be kicked out of school, year after year. 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". No matter how difficult his years at the school may have been, it only strengthened his love of music, and he also realised that the world of classical music had little to do with the spirit in which the music was created and began dreaming of a way to bring this great music to a wider and newer audience- a dream which has recently been realised through his show: "A Little Nightmare Music".
Hyung-ki, spelt R-I-C-H-A-R-D, and pronounced "Dick", is the only Korean Jew, (spelt J-O-O) in the world. He has performed at the White House, in a red house, and sadly not with Bernhard Greenhouse. However, Reachhard Yankee Jew, has performed with luminaries as diverse as Larry Adler, Gidon Kremer, Yehudi Menuhin, Yoko Ono, Jerry Lee Lewis, George Gershwin (after Gershwin's death), Arturo Toscanini (with a Music Minus One CD), and Nicolo Paganini (during a dream which then changed into a scene from an Indiana Jones Movie, as dreams do).
Hyung-ki has small hands and therefore finds some piano repertoire quite difficult to play, such as the music of Rachmaninov, who had Big Hands, (HK:"BUT ONLY HANDS SMALL!"). Anyway, even with this small hindrance, he loves to perform chamber music with fellow artists such as Renaud Capucon, Thomas Carroll, Michael Collins, Janine Jansen, Mischa Maisky, and Julian Rachlin, and happily performs recitals and also concertos with orchestras that include the London Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic, Warsaw Sinfonia, and the "Con-fessional" Orchestra. He also has a passion for teaching and has taught at institutions that include the Yehudi Menuhin School and Guildhall School of Music, although his passion does sometimes lead to screaming in an unintelligible language.
Hyzjxiiung%key's other achievements include: unofficial world record for "Fastest Tooth-brusher", watching the movie "Mission Impossible" 8 times in a row within 23 hours, and possessing a spectrum of over 500 different types of laughter which he hopes to record one day for a famous recording company.
"Stunning to hear in concert- he is a virtuoso" PAUL SIMON
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