Getting to Carnegie Hall via YouTube
This is way cool!
from the NY TImes December 1, 2008:
Traditionally, auditioning for an orchestra means appearing alone onstage in a nerve-jangling performance before grizzled veteran musicians. In the Google way, it means posting on the company’s video-sharing site, YouTube, for online judging by the professionals and then, ultimately, the YouTube universe.
That second option is the main feature of a new marketing project by Google to bolster the organized presence of classical music on YouTube and promote the idea of online communities. And orchestras and professional musicians, poking around in the murky but fecund possibilities of the Internet, have jumped on board as a way to further their own educational and musical missions.
The project, called the YouTube Symphony Orchestra (www.youtube.com/symphony), was announced on Monday in London and New York.
Boiled down, it has two essential parts. The composer Tan Dun has written a four-minute piece for orchestra. YouTube users are invited to download the individual parts for their instruments from the score, record themselves performing the music, then upload their renditions. After the entrants are judged, a mash-up of all the winning parts will be created for a final YouTube version of the piece.
