Meet Viorhythm

Today we’d like to introduce you to Viorhythm. They and their team shared their story with us below:

Viorhythm started when our director received an email request for a 15-minute set performance at one of the festivals in Orange County. Back then, she didn’t have a group, let alone any ideas of what the performance could be. While watching over her daughter’s classical violin duet group hard at work practicing for their next music competition, she realized there aren’t a lot of performance opportunities for young classically trained students who dedicate lots of their time every day to their practice. And even if they do, it’s mostly performing at the competitions or recital to their friends and family with small classical settings. She wanted the young violinists to have more fun, exciting performance experiences where they can freely engage with the audience and allow their love of music to shine through. 

She came up with the idea of combining classical instruments and pop music that is integrated with choreography and costumes inspired by pop culture. The young violinists were excited by this exciting new idea, and Viorhythm was born. 

We started practicing with groups, and it has been a truly rewarding experience for both our kids and parents. Motivated by the fun and journey this endeavor had brought to the her own children’s lives and musical careers, our director felt the desire to share this joyous and magical experience to the community. 

At the beginning, the group mainly focused on performing many pop music and movie soundtracks, however she soon realized that theirs an untapped opportunity within her own cultural identity in the form of anime music and theme songs. She immediately expanded our repertoires to include anime and other East Asian influences and that has since become one of our key elements of our identify as a group. 

Our director started promoting Viorhythm to so many different types of events from local festivals to big anime conventions across the OC and even as far as Las Vegas area over past 2 years. Thanks to the group’s hard work and the kids’ incredible dedication, people and venues have started to recognize us as a truly unique and one-of-a-kind performance that will always stand out in any line-up. 

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Our path was not exactly smooth yet always joyful and fulfilling. Both the children and the adults had to face many challenges along the way, but we overcame it together as a family. 

The biggest challenge for the children was to transition from a classically driven set of performance skills to a completely different set of skills which were essential in order to perform pop music. We had to change everything from how kids deliver their music to how they present themselves on a stage, from classical music to pop-style performance. 

Pop music often has much more complex rhythmic patterns and notes compare to classical music and kids need to be incredibly precise in order to synchronize with background track. At first, kids were using sheet music at performance because of the complexity of the music and the duration of the performances. But immediately after our first performance we realized that having music stands between the children and the audience is like a having invisible wall between them, their passion and energy simply could not carry through and the engagement with the audience we had hoped for wasn’t there. Therefore, we had decided to transition away from using sheet music which also meant that our young violinists needed to memorize 30-45 min worth of music, a huge challenge which they took on and conquered with much dedication and hard work. 

The another huge challenge was the choreography. As we went through more performances, we realized that simply performing the music was not enough to truly engage the audience’s attention for the full duration of the show. Therefore, we decided to enhance the performative aspect of our shows by integrating LEDs to the violin bows so that they can light up like lightsabers. This added not only visual flair but also became the key to the integration of minor choreography elements to our performances. However, none of our young violinists had backgrounds in dance, so we had to look for a dance coach who can help us first of all with the design of the choreography, but more importantly work well with children. After many trials and errors, we finally found our official dance coach, Mr. Noah, who patiently worked with us to craft choreography that was simple to learn, not disruptive to the music playing, yet still exciting to the audience. As the choreography developed further and became more complex, the challenge expanded exponentially since it added an extra component to memorize but it cannot come at the expense of the delivery of the music. It’s almost like asking someone to sing and chew food at the same time! 

As Viorhythm became more popular, the challenge for us adults became more complex as well. As the bookings became more frequent and more varied, we as complete amateurs needed to learn a large number of skills such as website making, SNS, creating audio and visual files, costume making, photography, videography, sound control, sales, and much more. Since all of Viorhythm staff members are parents of our young violinists, and none of our parents had experience with anything like this, we had to identify all these needs and simply take up and learn these new skills on the fly. 

Thanks to the dedication effort, and countless hours from all of our parents, Viorhythm was able to become what it is today. 

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
As a group, we are constantly growing and evolving, and as a result, we believe the opportunities we provide our young musicians are both unique and infinitely rewarding. In ways that other classically trained musicians never get to experience. Too often, classical music training is viewed by children as a chore, a task, just another box to tick in your set of skills. We believe that with Viorythm, we’ve unlocked a new way for children to engage with classical music that is both fun and engaging, showing that music is not just about delivering notes but about engaging with your audience through a shared experience. We hope the next generation will continue building on this love of music and continue to find way to share them with our community and debunk the idea that classical music training need to be stuck in the past but can also flourish within our current zeitgeist. 

What do you like best about our city? What do you like least?
Our city, Irvine, is a great city to raise our children and for families. Irvine is very safe, quiet, clean, lots of green spaces, and has one of the top school districts in the country. If not for all of these qualities, Viorythm simply could not have existed. As an amateur operation, rehearsal space is often difficult to come by, and we must rehearse outside. Luckily, we have so many parks near us and around the city that a good and open rehearsal space is always just around the corner but also large enough that we don’t have to disturb all the other parkgoers. Additionally, the public school system here has always supported and provided dedicated music programs to all children, allowing a level of access to classical music that simple would. It be possible elsewhere. The city is contributing the big time to the spread of the love of music to our younger generations, and a group like us simply could not exist without such a large pool of children that already on the path of music lovers. 

For Viorhythm and our families, our city Irvin has the special place in our hearts and will always be our home. 

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.viorhythm.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/viorhythm.kids/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@viorhythm