With sparkly hula-hoops circling their waists, Brett Yang and Eddy Chen started their energetic rendition of the Bach Double Violin Concerto’s first movement. The piece is normally stoic and controlled, but as the pair soldiered on, audience members laughed and cheered on Tuesday night at Symphony Center.
After the four-minute piece’s final D chord rang out, Yang and Chen let the hoops clatter to the stage floor. The comedy classical music duo, known as TwoSet Violin and popular on YouTube, stopped to catch their breath as their fans clapped and whooped.
“A live concert is the next level up,” Chen, 32, said Tuesday morning, drawing a comparison to making online videos. “It’s not just about us. It’s also the fact that TwoSet is surrounded by other passionate musicians — people that are also keen to learn about classical music.”
As TwoSet whirls through its third world tour, Yang and Chen said they hope to continue building excitement around classical music in young people, even in the social-media age.
“We are doing everything we can to make sure classical music can compete with brainrot,” Chen told the Tribune, referring to low-quality, attention-consuming online content that has gained immense popularity among young Internet users.
Yang and Chen, Taiwanese Australian musicians and content creators now based in Singapore, started posting YouTube videos more than a decade ago. In 2016, they performed their first classical music comedy shows, from which concerts like Tuesday night’s evolved.
When TwoSet started out, there were many skeptics, the two said. Few had tried this style of musical comedy before, Yang said.
“Now it’s a little bit different, but when we did it, we walked in — I felt like walking into a brick wall going onstage,” Yang, 33, said Tuesday morning. “I had to force myself on there. It’s that kind of first step that opens the door.”
Since then, Yang and Chen have amassed more than four million YouTube subscribers and toured across Australia, Asia, Europe and North America. Tuesday’s was the duo’s third performance in the Chicago area and second at Symphony Center.
Lilly Hoover and her mom, Tracy, drove about three hours from Peoria for their first classical music concert. Tracy Hoover bought box-level tickets as a surprise for her daughter, she said.
“They’re really funny, and they taught me a lot about music,” said Lilly Hoover, 16, who plays the violin and started following TwoSet during the COVID-19 pandemic. “It really helped me learn more about my instrument.”
In their 2025-26 tour, TwoSet’s concerts explore the tension between virality and substance, especially in the interconnected world of social media. Using a projector screen, they incorporated simulated livestreams, video calls and doomscrolling into their performance.
In the main part of the show, Yang and Chen compete in the “Sacrilegious Games,” a series of challenges testing their musical skills as well as their ability to follow trends and cater to audiences. In one of TwoSet’s early online videos, they adopted the word “sacrilegious” to describe people who sacrifice the integrity of music for flashy attention.
“Where does one find that right balance of integrity to the passion and art form that you’re trying to spread versus trying to entertain and make things fun?” Chen said. “At what point does it become too sacrilegious?”
One of the games tasks TwoSet with playing difficult pieces of violin repertoire with physical constraints. The audience roared with laughter when the performers slipped toilet paper rolls onto their left hands before resuming a virtuosic arrangement of Carlos Gardel’s “Por una Cabeza.”
And in another portion of the games, the two tried to play Niccolò Paganini’s “La Campanella” in various genres. When “K-pop” flashed on the screen behind them, Chen donned a wig meant to emulate the 19th century Italian violinist and started singing and dancing to “Sellout” — in what might be the first time a performer has twerked on the Orchestra Hall stage. TwoSet previously recorded the song in a music video parodying K-pop band Blackpink’s “Shut Down,” which loops the first eight measures of “La Campanella” for nearly three minutes.
After finishing the challenge, Chen sent a finger heart out to the audience, telling them, “Paganini oppa saranghae,” Korean for “I love older brother Paganini.”
Unlike traditional classical music concerts, TwoSet continuously interacted with their audience throughout the night.
At one point, Yang and Chen played violin charades: One member of the duo tried to guess what phrase the other was playing on their violin. When they got stuck on prompts like “Oprah Winfrey,” audience members assisted the player by making motions or, in the case of “Hamburger University,” whistling the McDonald’s jingle.
The duo also invited the audience to cheer for the concerto they most wanted each performer to play — the Sibelius and Mendelssohn Violin Concertos ended up winning Tuesday night.
Huyen Nguyen, who lives in the southwest suburbs, wasn’t sure if it was appropriate to cheer at first, “but everyone just started, so I just followed.”
“This proves that music really has no boundary,” said Nguyen, 21.
For many fans, the duo’s 2025 tour marks a happy resolution to a challenging time in TwoSet’s journey. In October 2024, Yang and Chen announced they would stop posting content as TwoSet Violin, sparking confusion with their fan base. After a three-month break, they uploaded a video titled “Hi” in April, explaining that burnout played a major factor in their time away.
“That was the first time in the last 10 years I actually truly felt like I took a break,” Yang told the Tribune Tuesday.
He recounted constantly thinking about unreplied emails and project ideas during a vacation to Japan, saying as he would look at art exhibits, his mind was split over whether he could set aside seemingly urgent work.
Tuesday marked a full year since TwoSet announced their hiatus. Since then, the violinists have learned to prioritize their work better, Yang said. The two always have more ideas than they can ever finish, Yang added, and are sharpening their focus to what the two can “deliver for our audience.”
“I was so happy they came back,” said Abi Lewis, 13, a high school student from south suburban Frankfort who has been playing the violin for more than four years. “I really wanted to come see them.”
Lewis, who has followed TwoSet’s videos for the last few years, said Yang and Chen have pushed her to practice more. And while Abi Lewis’s mom, Katherine Helm-Lewis, doesn’t follow TwoSet content herself, she said she can see its positive impact on her daughter.
“This is where technology does a good job,” said Katherine Helm-Lewis, 52. “Instead of mindless videos, she’s using it to hone her craft.”
William Tong is a freelance writer.
