Phuong Nguyen & Miho Sanou: accordion & piano con brio: a London-based former Vietnamese boatperson and his Japanese wife tell Kenneth Noble of their love of music, teaching and freedom

For A Change, Oct-Nov, 2004 by Kenneth Noble

REUNITED

It was on the day of the London Marathon in April 1993 that Nguyen managed to contact his family for the first time since leaving Vietnam. This was the result of a message that he had broadcast on the BBC World Service. A family friend in Vietnam happened to hear it, and told his family where he was. Somehow a message was sent to Nguyen, telling him the family's phone number.

Since then Nguyen and Sanou have visited both Vietnam and Japan, though Nguyen says that he is watched wherever he goes in his homeland. His parents are still alive but his father has had a stroke.

For such talented musicians, Nguyen and Sanou have less glamourous jobs than they might have. But they insist that they are happy with what they are doing. Nguyen speaks passionately of his gratitude, and of the importance of appreciating all the gifts that he and Sanou have been given: 'Thanks to music, art and enormous luck, I survived. Not many of my fellow-countrymen have the luxury of being free and being able to share creativity.'

AMBASSADORS FOR PEACE

Phuong Nguyen and Miho Sanou's visit to Caux was sponsored by Gillian Humphreys and the London-based Concordia Foundation, whose website proclaims: 'building bridges through music and the arts'. Nguyen echoes this thought: 'At our wedding there were people of 20 different languages. Music is a way of bridging between languages, and of expressing things that you are not allowed to speak. We see ourselves as ambassadors for peace through music and the arts.'