Forget Ecclesiastes. There is something new under the sun–and it appeared, like a shower of shooting stars, on April 15 at Carnegie Hall, a place not known for wild innovation. While teabaggers across the land looked back on their day of protesting the effrontery of income taxes, thousands of forward thinkers flocked to Carnegie Hall to witness a technologically mind-bending and oddly moving idea whose time just arrived: the YouTube Symphony Orchestra. Think Live Aid and Earth Aid on Steroids. Woodstock for the Age of Twitter. Mozart and Rachmoninoff meet Flash Gordon on the screen of your iPhone.
Conceived by a junior staff member at Google’s London office, the plan was to invite musicians from all over the world—professionals and amateurs—to audition by uploading YouTube videos of themselves performing excerpts from a symphony written for the occasion by Tan Dun. Celebrated pros, including Michael Tilson Thomas, who was the MC and conductor Wednesday night, narrowed down 3000 applicants to 200, and the 90 finalists were chosen on-line by Thomas and the public. The winners, from 30 countries, were flown to New York for three days of rehearsals to prepare for their Carnegie Hall debuts. A bouquet of famous soloists was on hand. There were the usual orchestral instruments, as well as a guitar (from a tiny town in Italy), a marimba (from Toyko), a wind instrument called the birbyne (Lithuania), and several Mac laptops that produced rich, wonderful sounds I won’t attempt to describe.
The audience skewed to young professionals, people who looked to be in their late twenties or thirties. At the bar during intermission, a couple in their 60s stood out as the oldest in the crowd. On an ordinary night, they’d be about average. I’m sure the ticket prices—$25 to $50—helped entice this demographic. (It helped entice me.)
Michael Tilson Thomas gave opening remarks and frequent comments, a break from the usual austerity and silence. “This is a meeting of a lot of different worlds,” he said. “The real time world, the on-line world. This is definitely an experience of getting acquainted. For us, it’s been something of a classical music summit conference and a scout jamboree with an element of speed dating thrown in.”
Between every piece was a short video about a musician in his or her distant homeland—each very moving—and video introductions by Yo-Yo Ma and Lang, Lang were beamed in from far away. While the music played, there were projections against the walls and ceiling and lovely moments when the stage was bathed in golden or blue or soft white lights.
But apart from the spectacle, was the music any good? It was good, though not great—yet being great had never been the expectation. Being was the point. Being there. Doing it. Pulling it off. Hands across the water. Fourteen million hits on the YouTube Symphony website—before the concert itself.
The orchestra sounded like what it was: people without much experience playing together, and the program was, with a few exceptions, user-friendly classical music, classical lite, and usually classical short: a smorgasbord of short pieces or single movements from full-length pieces. There was a little of everything, including three children age ten and under playing a six-handed piano piece by Rachmoninoff, two John Cage pieces played simultaneously, Gil Shaham playing Mozart, a young cellist playing the Bach Cello Suite that went with Yo-Yo Ma’s Internet hit video, “Women in Art,” the video of which was projected against the back wall, and a remarkable piece of electronic music by the gifted Mason Bates, music for two laptops, accompanied by a volcanic stream of black-and-white video art that blasted across the hall’s still surfaces, and brought the house down when it was over. It was my favorite piece of the night, the bold, rhythmic audio and the explosive visuals.
Of course the YouTube Symphony Orchestra is a gimmick, albeit a brilliant one. As with all gimmicks, where you stand on the value of it depends on who you are—and how threatened you might or might not feel by the democratization of an extremely elite, hierarchical system. But there it is, which means there’s no turning back. There will be more YouTube concerts—Thomas said there would be—but let’s hope YouTube pick-up symphonies don’t replace the ones that exist now. Let’s hope that the enthusiasm for this event translates over into younger people seeking out classical music—the way the Harry Potter books were expected to get kids reading books besides Harry Potter.
In the meantime, I’m going to cherish the evening. The audience was euphoric. The musicians were proud and professional—each with a tale of personal triumph. In his video, an American physics student who plays the bass delivered perhaps the most ringing endorsement of the event and of the power of music itself: “Of all the things they could have done, they chose to create the YouTube Symphony. They could have had the YouTube Basketball Team.”
The orchestra wasn’t always in tune—but they had just begun rehearsing three days ago, and many didn’t speak English. That they were there at all—and as good as they were—was irresistible. The impossible always takes a little longer.
Don’t take my word for it. See for yourself, on YouTube, for free. And let me know what you think.
