Yesterday evening I had the pleasure of attending a wonderful concert at Carnegie Hall: the YouTube Symphony. The YouTube Symphony is an orchestra that was assembled through auditions conducted via – you guessed it – YouTube. As such, the process was open to musicians from around the world which is entirely different from how orchestras (even youth orchestras) are traditionally assembled. The idea fits with a concept that we discussed at our hacking education conference: the Internet provides a whole new way of credentialing. No longer is it a function of which school you graduated from (or didn’t) or what degree you received (or didn’t) but rather how much you have actually learned as shown through a visible and shared record (here videos posted to YouTube, but could be a blog, contributions to open source, etc).
The concert itself was terrific. Michael Tilson Thomas was probably the perfect conductor for this given the range of what he has done and his passion for a broad conception of classical music which was on ample display yesterday. The Orchestra did amazingly well for a group of musicians that had only rehearsed together a few times. The sound while not distinctive was clear with great timing and precision. The major orchestral pieces performed yesterday were mostly of the high energy variety and the enthusiasm of the performers really came through. But even on the more ethereal Villa-Lobos and Debussy they sounded really good. There were a few stunt performances, such as the piano solos by Yuja Wang which was probably the fastest precise playing I have ever witnessed. Here is an early more detailed review of the concert.
The other thing that worked well most of the time (and I wish other classical concerts would do much more of) was the incorporation of video. Soloists were often projected on the wall behind the orchestra and sometimes accompanied by additional projections onto the ceilings and side walls. While some may think of this a as a cheesy son et lumière show, I felt it provided a great additional dimension to the performance and only on one occasion was distracting from the musical performance.
All in all, this was a great success and I was moved by attending. Many, many thanks to Margot Heiligman and her husband Bill Williams - the artistic coordinator for the YouTube Symphony - for inviting me to this inspiring event.
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