This is an email, which Stephen Barefoot, the wonderful presenter from Wilmington just sent out to fellow presenters and also forwarded to us.
We are more than thankful for such kind words:
Please indulge my involuntary need to spout off for just a moment while I’m still wearing my presenter hat…
Once in a while, we have that indescribable experience of putting an artist on our stage and then seeing that artist essentially transform not only those members of the audience who’ve opened their intellectual or emotional doors to allow the experience in — but who transform us as well. And some of us are even getting paid to be there — we’re paid to have this happen! How incredible is that? (I didn’t say we’re paid a lot, I just said we’re paid.)
We each have our lists, and we each have those moments to guard and hold onto for as long as our minds or memory hold out. My contemporary list includes Neo Labos Dance … Dulcinea Langfelder in VICTORIA… Tomas Kubinek… Jesse Cook on fire… Susan Werner singing La Vie en Rose…others, too, who know who they are.
I’ve just returned from Thalian Hall in Wilmington — and four consecutive performances which did just that. And I still feel too totally sapped to even type. I don’t wanta type. I don’t wanta do anything. I wanta go back to that room and that performance and that time in the car together between the hotel and the theatre. I wanta go back to that laughter. I wanta go back to be in a room with that kind of creative artistry and heaven-anointed gift.
I wanta go back to meet those people who arrived an hour before showtime after driving 12 hours from Indianapolis, saying “This is the closest they’ve ever come to us! I just wish we didn’t have to drive back after the show.”
I wanta go back to the folks who came from New Jersey, from Tennessee, from Atlanta, Ohio, Philadelphia. I wanta go back to the parents who brought their ten-year-old son who’s just getting turned on to his piano lessons, and the 14 year-old who proudly came up to tell me he’s studying viola and “I still like it even after what they said — but now I may have to pay more attention to the violin…”
I’m talking now about Igudesman and Joo. Aleksey Igudesman and Richard Hyung-ki Joo. I’ve simply had the most glorious experience of spending four days with two world-consuming geniuses who have to be THE best on the planet at what they do — yet how do you say that because there is no one else on this planet who actually DOES what they do? So maybe we just expand it to include all planets. And maybe it doesn’t matter if they’re THE best, since they’re the ONLY.
Their phenomenal deep, deep well of merged talents is impressive enough by itself. But it’s the true ability and training and dedication and discipline over these years since these guys met as pre-teen students together that has grown them into such virtuosi (that may be the first time I’ve ever typed that word in my life— now I feel deficient) with the piano and violin. You have to be so outrageously proficient and intrinsically part of it all from the inside to then be able to mock and parody and deconstruct and reassemble and re-create in this kind of mind-blowing fashion. Richard’s hands — regardless of their size — are miracles. And you pray that Aleksey has those facial & eye expressions already insured for billions with Lloyd’s of London.
The Monty Python references and comparisons are pretty apt. For some audience, the jokes and hooks flying from the stage are coming so fast and furious that they’re just swooshing over heads, maybe to hit in a few days. I’m sure there’ll remain some who’ll still be wondering “what the hell just happened?” two weeks from now. But they’ll still be thinking it — and that is the step, isn’t it?
www.igudesmanandjoo.com. If you’ve never watched any clips, please do so. Or add to the fifteen million people hitting YouTube. It’ll be an hour well-spent for you to watch the entire video of A LITTLE NIGHTMARE MUSIC. Then know that you’ve had only an appetizer — and it’s on a monitor. It’s maybe a 10% entrance to what happens in the world of real life… Janet Williamson’s the US agent —
I wish I had the funds & wherewithal to put them on a stage in a 2,000 seat hall and then pay for every seat to be filled with symphony musicians. Thousands of them. Then I’d want to be hidden somewhere under the stage up front where I could watch the audience and have their every laugh recorded. If I had fifty thousand bucks to schedule Carnegie Hall for Igudesman and Joo, I’d do it tomorrow. They’ll be there so quickly already.
But for now, Igudesman and Joo are at Louisburg College tomorrow — Tuesday night. They’re at the Carolina Theatre in Greensboro Wednesday night. Then they fly out at the crack of dawn on Thursday and be on stage in Vancouver in less than two hours after their plane is scheduled to land.
If you don’t have time to fly or drive to Vancouver, you should call Robert Poole in Louisburg or Brian Gray in Greensboro now. Make the drive. I&J deserve your attention. More importantly, you deserve them. If there’s a bolt of boundary-obliterating lightning about to strike to transform two insanely brilliant musicians and comedians into global rock stars, the names will be Igudesman and Joo. We should all be so lucky to stand close enough to singe from a bit of that electricity, just so we could know what it feels like for a second to be inside their minds — and fingers.
God bless presenters. We’re some of the luckiest people in the world.