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SFCV Podcast May 26 2011
An interview with YouTube Symphony Orchestra member Omar Shelly
It was a young musician’s dream — jetting off to Sydney, Australia, living in luxury, working with renown conductor Michael Tilson Thomas and talented colleagues from around the globe, all as a perk of presenting concerts to packed houses in the Sydney Opera House, not to mention another 33 million viewers online. The finale concert displaced the rock band U2 as the most-watched live music concert online.
Violist Omar Shelly and piccolo-player Daniel Sharp at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, were two of the 101 musicians from 33 countries selected for the 2011 YouTube Symphony Orchestra, which convened in Sydney in March for a week of intensive music making and friendship-making. Conducted by artistic director MTT, with a second world premiere, Mothership, commissioned from sonic artist Mason Bates, the festival was a recap, if not an upgrade to the inaugural event at Carnegie Hall in New York City, in 2009.
Says Shelly: “We all had a strange combination of jet lag and euphoria at meeting each other and being able to take part in this amazing experience. It was very social and fun, but also a lot of hard work. Sydney was the cleanest city I’ve ever seen and the level of musicianship in the orchestra was inspiring.” Participants — from a 14-year-old Argentinean violinist to a 49-year-old flute teacher from Boston — had undergone a virtual selection process, which involved uploading their audition videos to YouTube for evaluation by professionals in the London Symphony and others, followed by a public voting system.
The idea behind the project is to present classical music in new ways, using the viral technology of YouTube to bring it to more viewers. Said Grammy and Academy Award-winning composer Tan Dun upon launching the first iteration: "YouTube is the biggest stage on earth, and I want to see what the world's undiscovered musical geniuses will create on it." And in 2011 this included short orchestral standards alongside a heavy dose of newly composed music containing a strong visual component such as the real-time collaboration with sand artist Kseniya Simonova.
In a multimedia display worthy of the Olympic Games, one piece combined light projections on the interior and the exterior “sails” of the Opera House with rousing symphonic music. But aside from the obvious glitz and flash, YouTube has utilized video to tell the very human stories of the lives of the participants and their connection to music. Like the stories about Olympic athletes and their personal journeys, each musician tells their tale in an introductory video and the channel is filled with genuine people from interesting cultural backgrounds, in addition to daily highlights and exciting musical results from the week.
Shelly found it to be a successful experiment. “I think this made music real for a lot of the viewers. It wasn’t a black tie sort of presentation, it was really accessible.” Call it old wine in new bottles, but the Internet seems to be serving up the drink of choice these days and the YouTube Symphony Orchestra is tipping its glass.