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The YouTube Symphony Orchestra(YTSO) was an orchestra assembled by open auditions hosted by YouTube, the London Symphony Orchestra and several other worldwide partners. Launched on December 1, 2008, [1] it was the first online collaborative orchestra.
The open call for entries was until January 28, 2009. Musicians wishing to audition had to post a video of themselves playing the "Internet Symphony No. 1 'Eroica'", by Tan Dun, along with a second talent video of themselves playing a preset audition piece to YouTube. Musicians of all cultures were encouraged to audition, as even if a particular instrument was not specifically scored in the original score, a musician was allowed to simply play a part in the same pitch range as their chosen instrument. Judges selected finalists and alternates was from January 29 to February 13, 2009, and the finalists were voted on by the YouTube community from February 14 to February 22, 2009. [2]
Winners were announced on March 2, [2] and were invited to travel to New York in April 2009, to participate in the YouTube Symphony Orchestra summit, and play at Carnegie Hall [3] under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas. [1] As of the concert date, there were 15 million views of the YouTube audition tapes. [4] The concert featured a series of short pieces that had been rehearsed for several days, as well as guest soloists Joshua Roman, Gil Shaham, Measha Brueggergosman, Yuja Wang, and classical / electronica composer Mason Bates. Three children were tutored for the event by pianist Lang Lang and played Rachmaninoff's waltz for piano six hands. [4]
The Tan Dun submissions were compiled into a mashup video premiered at Carnegie Hall on April 15, then hosted on the "YouTube Symphony Channel" as of April 16.
On October 12, 2010, a video posted on the YouTube Symphony channel announced that they would be doing a second symphony, this time performing at the Sydney Opera House on March 20, 2011. [5] Tilson Thomas would again be directing, and had asked Bates to write a piece, entitled Mothership , in which performers would be invited to improvise with the orchestra, both live and via an uplink. [6] A video of the LSO performing Mothership was posted on YouTube on October 11, 2010. [7]
The concert also featured a performance of Mozart's "Caro bell'idol mio" by Renée Fleming and the Sydney Children's Choir.
Like the previous year, contestants were required to record themselves performing the piece on their own instruments. However, since the piece features sections of improvisation, players are also invited to send in clips of themselves improvising. Applications closed on November 28, 2010.
The performance was broadcast live on Sunday 20 March [of 2011] at 8pm Sydney time, [8] with rebroadcasts being done throughout the day for each time zone. The completed performance was uploaded to YouTube at the end of March 20 and can now be viewed on the symphony channel. It was "the most-watched live music concert on the Internet", and "the most frequently viewed concert in the history of the video-sharing website". [9]
As of March 20, 2011, the live feed of the concert was the 21st most viewed event in the Musicians Channel on YouTube. [10] [11] The live stream of the Grand Finale concert at the Sydney Opera House was the largest live stream YouTube ever made, connecting 30.7 million streams on computers and a further 2.8 million streams on mobile devices. The previous leader was U2 live on YouTube.
The London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) is a British symphony orchestra based in London. Founded in 1904, the LSO is the oldest of London's symphony orchestras. The LSO was created by a group of players who left Henry Wood's Queen's Hall Orchestra because of a new rule requiring players to give the orchestra their exclusive services. The LSO itself later introduced a similar rule for its members. From the outset the LSO was organised on co-operative lines, with all players sharing the profits at the end of each season. This practice continued for the orchestra's first four decades.
Michael Tilson Thomas is an American conductor, pianist and composer. He is Artistic Director Laureate of the New World Symphony, an American orchestral academy in Miami Beach, Florida, Music Director Laureate of the San Francisco Symphony, and Conductor Laureate of the London Symphony Orchestra. He gave his last performance with the San Francisco Symphony in January 2024 while fighting brain cancer. He led the Houston Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in Beethoven's 9th Symphony on November 14, 2024.
Valery Abisalovich Gergiev is a Russian conductor and opera company director. He is currently general director and artistic director of the Mariinsky Theatre and of the Bolshoi Theatre and artistic director of the White Nights Festival in St. Petersburg. He was formerly chief conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and of the Munich Philharmonic.
The Symphonic Game Music Concerts are a series of award-winning orchestral video game music concerts first performed in 2003 at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, Germany, notable for being the longest running and the first of their kind outside Japan. They are produced by Thomas Böcker and performed by various orchestras conducted by Andy Brick (2003–2007), Arnie Roth, Niklas Willén and Eckehard Stier.
Lincoln Portrait is a 1942 classical orchestral work written by the American composer Aaron Copland. The work involves a full orchestra, with particular emphasis on the brass section at climactic moments. The work is narrated with the reading of excerpts of Abraham Lincoln's great documents, including the Gettysburg Address. An orchestra usually invites a prominent person to be the narrator.
Shaker Loops is a 1978 composition by American composer John Adams, originally written for string septet. The original "modular" score, published by Associated Music Publisher, has since been withdrawn and replaced by a 1983 string orchestra version. This version was first performed in April of that year at Alice Tully Hall, New York, by the American Composers Orchestra, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas. The string orchestra version can be played either by a septet of soloists or by a string orchestra of any size, where the violins are divided into 3 parts throughout.
The London Symphony Chorus is a large symphonic concert choir based in London, UK, consisting of over 150 amateur singers, and is one of the major symphony choruses of the United Kingdom. It was formed in 1966 as the LSO Chorus to complement the work of the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO). The LSC is today an independent self-run organisation governed by a council of nine elected representatives. It continues to maintain a close association with the LSO but also takes part in projects with other orchestras and organisations both in the UK and abroad. The LSC performs mainly with the LSO at the Barbican Centre in London as well as appearing at other concert venues around the UK and Europe and regularly at the Avery Fisher Hall, New York.
Sir Clive Daniel Gillinson, CBE is a British cellist and arts administrator. He is best known for his long tenure as the Managing Director of the London Symphony Orchestra and his current position as Executive and Artistic Director of Carnegie Hall.
Valentina Yevhenivna Lisitsa is a pianist. Lisitsa independently launched her career on social media, without initially signing with a tour promoter or record company. By 2012, Lisitsa was among the most frequently viewed pianists on YouTube. The Toronto Symphony canceled her 2015 engagements as soloist with them because of her social media postings in support of pro-Russian separatists during the Russo-Ukrainian War.
Stjepan Hauser, known professionally as HAUSER, is a Croatian cellist. He was a member of 2CELLOS, along with Luka Šulić, and continues to perform solo.
Ray Chen is a Taiwanese-Australian violinist. He was the winner of the 2008 International Yehudi Menuhin Violin Competition and the 2009 Queen Elisabeth Competition. Since then, he has regularly collaborated with the world’s foremost orchestras and appeared at renowned concert halls.
The Internet Symphony No. 1 - "Eroica", is a piece written by the Chinese composer Tan Dun for the YouTube Symphony Orchestra. It was the first of such events where musicians around the world play the same piece virtually via the internet, and the best performers selected were arranged into an internet symphony orchestra, featured on YouTube. In addition to submitting a performance of the Internet Symphony No.1 ("Eroica"), musicians were also allowed to submit a video of themselves playing one of the other selected pieces. The best performers were invited to play at New York City's Carnegie Hall on April 15, 2009, with all expenses paid by YouTube. Winners were decided by the most votes cast by YouTube users.
Video Game Orchestra (VGO) is a Boston-based project that performs its own "rockestral" arrangements of video game music with a rock band, vocals, and orchestra. The project was created by Shota Nakama, a Boston-based producer from Okinawa, Japan. Comparative to the other existing major video game concert acts, which mostly focus on the pure orchestral performances, the rock band element is the core essence of the VGO. Their concerts are presented as a rock show with entertaining audience engagement and improvised solos.
Yuja Wang is a Chinese pianist. Born in Beijing, she began learning piano there at age six, and went on to study at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.
Johannesburg Festival Overture is a composition for orchestra by the English composer William Walton, commissioned to mark the seventieth anniversary of Johannesburg in 1956. It is a short, lively piece, fast-moving throughout.
Mason Wesley Bates is a Grammy award-winning American composer of symphonic music and DJ of electronic dance music. He is the first composer-in-residence of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and he has also been in residence with Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, the Pittsburgh Symphony, and the California Symphony. In addition to his notable works Mothership, Anthology of Fantastic Zoology, and The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, he composed the score to Gus Van Sant's film The Sea of Trees. In a 2018 survey of American orchestras, he was rated the second-most performed living composer.
Peter Seymour is a double bass player and composer who resides in Brooklyn, New York. He is the co-creator, manager and bass player of Project Trio, an internationally touring chamber music ensemble. He has performed in concert halls around the world, including Severance Hall, The Concertgebow, Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall. Seymour is also an active educator. As a member of Project Trio, he organizes and performs in more than 100 school concerts a year.
Mothership is a single-movement composition for orchestra and electronica by the American composer Mason Bates. The piece received its world premiere March 20, 2011 at the Sydney Opera House by the YouTube Symphony Orchestra under Michael Tilson Thomas, with featured improvisatorial soloists Paulo Calligopoulos on electric guitar, Ali Bello on violin, Su Chang on zheng, and John Burgess on bass guitar. The premiere was broadcast live on YouTube and garnered nearly two million viewers.
The Lubbock Symphony Orchestra (LSO) is an orchestra based in Lubbock, Texas, and is one of the oldest community organizations in the region. The orchestra is composed of professional musicians from all parts of the Lubbock community. The orchestra currently performs at Lubbock Memorial Civic Center Theatre but will relocate to the Buddy Holly Hall of Performing Arts and Sciences following the hall's completion. The ensemble is led by David Cho, the orchestra's seventh music director, who has been with the orchestra since 2012.
TwoSet Violin was a musical comedy duo consisting of Australian violinists and YouTubers Brett Yang and Eddy Chen. Yang and Chen started out posting classical covers of pop music on their YouTube channel but eventually switched focus to musical comedy videos, which gained them more viewership. Yang and Chen eventually also performed in live concerts and tours. On 14 October 2024, the duo posted that they would cease creating content as TwoSet Violin.
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