The staggeringly popular classical music comedy duo, TwoSet Violin, yesterday announced the end of their creative partnership.
In a shock final social media post, the two shared:
‘This will be the last piece of content we post as TwoSet Violin. It’s been a wild ride with you all for the last 11 years. We’ve all grown up together and it’s kinda surreal that we’re ending our chapter here.
‘Thank you for all the laughs, the genuine encounters in real life and all the special moments we’ve had with you online and offline. Much love, Brett and Eddy.’
Who are TwoSet Violin?
Formed by Australian violinists Brett Yang and Eddy Chen, TwoSet Violin are best known for their YouTube channel, which in October 2022 had reached over 4 million subscribers and 1 billion views. The pair gave a celebratory concert in November 2022 on achieving that milestone, making their debut with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra on two Stradivari violins loaned to them from the Tarisio Foundation.
They are also hugely popular on social media, with 1.4 million Facebook followers and 45.5 million likes on TikTok. Since September 2016, they have embarked on a number of live shows and tours.
Their humorous videos encompass just about every aspect of being a musician. Recurring topics include the need for musicians to practise (embodied by a character called ‘Ling Ling’ who practises ‘for 40 hours per day’), prodigies and how accurately (or otherwise) classical music is portrayed in film and pop videos.
One of their most popular videos lambasts a player for claiming to be the ‘world’s fastest violinist’ in his rendition of Flight of the Bumblebee.
How did TwoSet Violin meet?
The pair first met in 2006, when they were 13 and 14 and playing with the Queensland Youth Symphony. They both went on to study the violin at the Queensland Conservatorium, where they first started making YouTube videos. Initially, they made covers of pop songs, but when this failed to take off, they began making comical videos about life as a music student.
Brett and Eddy have collaborated in video and on stage with such leading soloists as Lang Lang, Hilary Hahn, Janine Jansen, James Ehnes, Maxim Vengerov, Ray Chen, and Anne Akiko Meyers.