KVT – “Brothers in Concert” – Colours of Sounds

Boudifully Exciting Oz-type Music

It could be intimated that Australia is a country still in search of its own musical identity. Indigenous Australians’ music has been used as a minor lynch pin (think didgeridoo) but apart from these Indigenes, over 90% of Australians are immigrants. Since the middle of the last century the Anglo Saxon/Irish flavored demographic composition has been highly seasoned with people from other European roots and more recently, since they threw out their White Australia Policy in 1973, a fine and delicious spread of Asians and Africans. The original and preferred Christian dominations have been attractively sprinkled with beliefs and non beliefs from the proverbial 4 corners. And from this developing and exciting multi cultural mob exciting music is being concocted that will probably end up being called ‘Australian’ instead of being thrown into the general classification of World Music.

Two Australian musicians in the thrust towards composing this musical identity gave us some excellent samples on Monday night at the rather awesomely high tech and very new Voice of Vietnam auditorium where huge TV screens monitor the audience and the performers as if you are in a stadium or at an awards night. It’s a very delightful and comfortable venue for performance and once they tone down the pre-show musak, could become an international type venue. (Hopefully the TV screens could be turned off too.)

But back to the young musicians. Both are first generation Australians. Leonard Grigoryan is of Armenian background with parents migrating in 1981 from Kazakhstan, and Joseph Tawadros was born in Cairo in 1983. Both are internationally acclaimed musicians in their own right and award winning as part of separate Brothers musical groups. Leonard teams with his brother, Slava, as a classical guitar duo

and Joseph, as a solo oud player and as a string and percussion duo…with his brother, James.

To wrap it all up in scintillating fashion the 2 sets of brothers team up as The Band Of Brothers and are becoming very internationally famous for their classical, world music and improvisational performances and for their own compositions.

So we had Leonard excitingly warming us up by performing one of his own guitar pieces and another with a Brazilian theme. Then Joseph wowed us with two of his own pieces on the lute-like oud.

Then things got really brilliant with the two playing and improvising to two more of Joseph’s compositions…..at this stage I was wishing that the Grapevine’s new commentator, Paul Zetter, was here to give the readers a blow by blow or strum by strum account of it all.

After an interlude of traditional Vietnamese music played on the two-stringed đàn nhị, the one stringed đàn bầu and on a wooden sáo flute (a delight to hear these instruments played expertly to Vietnamese compositions instead of the mish mash of stuff they generally play at up-market restaurants… though I once saw a slight tear roll down an Australian expat’s face when he heard iconic Ozzy tunes “Click Go The Shears” and “Waltzing Matilda” plucked and twanged on the đàn bầu at Le Tonkin) the duo finished the night with two more Tawadros pieces that left you wanting more though when they started their last piece ‘Freo’ by picking out a few bars of Waltzing Matilda I had to pinch myself back to reality.

All in all it was a bit of a pity that the evening had to be formalized with speeches and too many translations. It would have been more effective to just let the duo get on with it all một mình. A suggestion for all organizers is to see how the French do it with visiting artists at L’Espace, the recent Mina Agossi concert being a perfect example. But then when you are thematically using the event to show co-operation between Australia and the Voice of Vietnam then you have to play the official game and they all played it well, even down to the tables with bottles of water on them in front of the VIP seats.

A full house, mainly Vietnamese, really enjoyed the duo (well apart from my female neighbour who had an anal attachment to her supa dupa mobile phone and took two calls in between texting) and if we get either of the Brothers back in town or the complete Band they’ll definitely have a packed house (without the superfluous add ons, we hope).

Thanks to the Ozzies and their brilliant Musica Viva organization for giving us this exposure to some really tuyệt vời new music.

Funny how things happen. Just as I was about to wrap this all up, the online radio station that I usually tune into when I tap out my scattered thoughts, played a Band of Brothers bit. Spooky!

To read Paul Zetter’s review on Mina Agossi’s concert at L’Espace, visit Hanoigrapevine’s previous post.