Plucking the heart strings: Guitarist Le Thu has returned home to perform a show alongside musicians Tuan Khang and Hung Phong at the North-South Guitar Exchange tonight at the French Cultural Centre. — Photo vtc.vn

HA NOI — Indian-based guitarist Le Thu has returned home to perform a show alongside musicians Tuan Khang and Hung Phong at the North-South Guitar Exchange tonight at the French Cultural Centre.

The show, entitled Ngoanh Lai (Looking Back), will take place at the Ha Noi venue on 24 Trang Tien Street and see the guitarists review their experiences and emotions after many years pursuing professional musical careers.

Thu will play classical pieces composed by Johann Sebastian Bach, Heitor Villa-Lobos and Astor Piazzolla, while Phong will perform romantic and traditional Vietnamese songs by popular local composers. Khang will cover songs composed during the revolutionary war which have been popularised by veteran guitarists like Ta Tan, Hai Thoai and Pham Van Phuc.

Thu was taught to play by her father, an amateur guitarist, at the age of four. One year later, she was performing publicly with her father and the blind guitarist Van Vuong on big stages. When Thu was seven, she became a student of the Viet Nam National Academy of Music and studied guitar for 15 years. She now lives in India and works as a head of the guitar faculty at the Indian Institute of Music Dynamics.

Thu has been invited to perform in different countries such as Turkey, Bulgaria and Malaysia after winning the Outstanding Asian Guitarist award at the Calcutta International Classical Guitar Competition and Festival in 2010 and winning prizes at similar events in Thailand and Romania in 2011.

After the show, Thu will return to India before participating in some international guitar competitions in Germany, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic.

Thu once returned to Viet Nam in 2011 and reunited with Phong and Khang at the debut of a project named North-South Guitar Exchange, which aims to connect the best Vietnamese guitarists in the whole country and bring guitar music closer to the audience. The project, launched by Khang, has continued to grow and tonight's show is the ninth in the series. It is funded entirely by the artists and money they raised from sponsors. Although Khang and his colleagues have faced many difficulties organising the events, he has claimed that one day he will be able to deliver one show each month. — VNS