KVT – Jumping to the Beat of Different Drums

KVT gives AUN 10 out of 10

The Japanese keep on coming up with the brilliant goods

On Feb 3 they gave us very top of the pops jazz fusion with UnitAsia, and on Valentines Day they got our hearts beating to the percussion beat of AUN.

Twin brothers, Ryohei and Kohei Inoue (born 1969) are famous Japanese percussionists as well as lute and flute players and were leading members of the Emmy award winning Ondekoza percussion group for 18 years

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Mt1-FN6PdM&feature=endscreen&NR=1[/youtube]

They started their own group, AUN, in 2000 playing a highly individualistic style of new music using traditional Japanese instruments. They’ve peformed many overseas tour in this guise. Typical Aun sound is on these sound bites and with’Ground Zero’ in this You Tube clip
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq2VdbiIcZs&feature=related[/youtube]

In 2008 they formed the highly succesful AUN J Classic Orhestra, a combo that plays a variety of music, mainly on traditional instruments that takes in rock, jazz and ambient styles and if they ever get to Hanoi they’ll be the hit of the year in any music venue. Don’t miss out on this fabulous clip from an Italian gig

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onwB-2gy9xc&feature=related[/youtube]

As AUN, with versatile and athletic and equally famous percussionist and cymballist Saito Hideyuki assisting, we got an evening that had the Youth Theater thundering with a magnificent percussion set as exampled in this You Tube clip

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrCAYqSi1Rk&feature=related[/youtube]

The three are extremely personable and had the large audience eating out of their hands with a mixture of dramatic percussion mingled with flute and lute, very clever clowning around, and audience participation in one of those performances that made you very glad that you braved the Valentines’ Day motorbike cavalcades and the wet and chill to grab a good seat in an audience that included a few on the Vietnamese celebrity A list

Co-organized by the Embassy of Japan in Vietnam and the National Academy of Music to promote cultural exchange between Vietnam and Japan, the segment where AUN joined two versatile, female Vietnamese musicians playing a dan tranh and a dan bau. was the most beautiful, at times electric, live music I’ve heard anywhere this year.

The great clip below show the twins doing a clownaround performance to kids in Papua New Guinea

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54271FypNi8&feature=related[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTjQl5Lgzcs[/youtube]