Several people have made it to Carnegie Hall with internet speed.Â
On Wednesday, April 15th, the concert at the famed Hall will be performed by an orchestra assembled online. The YouTube Symphony Orchestra is a promotion by Google to make its video-sharing site an online destination for classical music and creative alliances.
“I think of this as setting a new trend in online artistic collaborations,” says Tim Lee, a former project marketing manager for Google in London who came up with the idea. Down the road, says Mr. Lee, rock bands or Broadway musicals looking for talent could audition parts globally using YouTube.
In December, aspiring orchestra members downloaded the scores for their instruments from a piece commissioned from the composer Tan Dun (who wrote the score for the movie “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”), then posted videos of themselves playing on YouTube. Users uploaded more than 3,000 audition clips in two months, according to Google.
Then, professional musicians from groups including the London Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic narrowed the field to 200 finalists. YouTube users then voted on their favorites.
Google is paying the airfare and expenses for the 96 winners, who range in age from 15 to 55 and hail from 29 different countries or territories. Though many are professional or semi-professional musicians, a few are amateurs. Regardless, they’ll have only a few days to rehearse together as an orchestra, as well as in the chamber ensembles and improvisatory and solo arrangements in which they’ll play during the concert.
Ed Sanders, YouTube’s project marketing director for Europe, says the concert will be more of an “experience” than a traditional concert, with multimedia effects and videos from Yo-Yo Ma, Lang Lang and others. Video of the concert will be available on YouTube the day after the event.
Tags: Internet Speed, YouTube