YouTube brings Carnegie Hall to your home

[Yuukee]

YouTube, the video-sharing Web site owned by Google Inc., announced an online classical-music contest whose winners will gather at New York’s Carnegie Hall and perform a specially written orchestral work. Musicians have until Jan. 28 to video themselves each playing their instrument’s segment in the five-minute piece by Tan Dun, composer of music for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and the soundtrack to Ang Lee’s 2000 movie “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” The project’s partners include the London Symphony Orchestra and Michael Tilson Thomas, music director of the San Francisco Symphony and artistic director of the New World Symphony.

“There are a phenomenal number of communities out there in the classical space already on YouTube,” Ed Sanders, product marketing manager for YouTube, told a London press conference via satellite from New York yesterday. He said he hoped the project would help bring together these scattered musicians. As an example, a violinist may go to the YouTube Symphony Orchestra Web page, pick “violin” from the drop-down menu, download the sheet music, and get online tips from an LSO violinist on how to play it. Then the musician plays the violin part on camera and posts the video. Winners will be flown to New York in April for a three-day “summit” led by Tilson Thomas, and will perform Tan Dun’s work at Carnegie Hall on April 15. Their original video clips will be merged into a YouTube symphony posted on the site.