YouTube Symphony Orchestra
16 Apr 2009I didn’t get home until about three in the morning, so I took the day off from school today to sleep and catch up on work.
The concert was amazing. The orchestra itself was really cool; a blend of people from all different countries. The conductor, Michael Tilson Thomas, was incredibly fun to watch. He had more expression than almost anyone I’ve ever seen before.
Four ten-thousand-watt (I think) projectors covered the entire ceiling and back wall of the stage of Carnegie Hall. Before each piece, they would show maps of where the composer lived, as well as periodically showing videos about select performers from the orchestra, compilations of audition videos during intermission, and some really cool multimedia stuff during a few pieces. During John Cage’s Renga and Aria, for instance, they projected the shapes and syllables he used to notate the piece, which is pretty cool sounding. Will and I got a look at the control room for all of the video, and it was intense. There were racks and racks of complicated audio-video and computer equipment, and all sorts of things we didn’t understand at all.
The orchestra also played Ride of the Valkyries, which is pretty much the most epic piece of music ever.
For me, the two highlights of the performance were the Internet Symphony No. 1, Eroica, composed and guest-conducted by Tan Dun in its world premier, and a piece they did with Mason Bates, a really awesome electronic DJ. He played with the full orchestra. Dun’s piece had a part for car rims which were played with ball-peen hammers.
The irony of wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt in a concert hall named after Andrew Carnegie did not escape me, and I think it was responsible for my being rejected by an interviewer from the BBC, who I guess was looking for people more well-dressed than us. We were a rather odd-looking group.
We hung out in Times Square for a while beforehand, got some excellent food from a street vendor, bought some hip-hop (which we listened to on the way home), and almost purchased some Obama condoms (“Michelle approved, ladies and gentlemen”, and “Create your very own stimulus package”), but they were $5, which was not practical.
The YouTube Symphony Orchestra is a historic event, but not for the reasons I had originally been thinking of. In terms of the formation of musical groups, the real democratizer was the recording process. In that respect, this is really no different. But it does really represent the way that classical music, and, indeed, the idea of collaborative music in general, is changing in response to this type of technology. It opens up new ground for the way music can be composed, put together, and performed. I am excited to see where it goes from here, and I am proud to have witnessed this event.
Also, this post has more categories than any I have ever written before, I think. It is just that awesome.