[Dixielandjazz] A New Punch Line

[Stephen G Barbone]

Remember that old joke about a musician who asks a hippee on the  
street in NYC for directions to Carnegie Hall?
"How do you get to Carnegie Hall?"
"Practice man, practice."
Now you can get there on You Tube. Thought: Why couldn't Jazz at  
Lincoln Center use the same approach? Perhaps they did in modified  
fashion as Wynton Marsalis saw Jonathan Russell on You Tube before  
inviting him to play with the Lincoln Center Jazz Band.
And why couldn't the second option (paragraph 2 below) be used in jazz?
Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband

NY TIMES - December 2, 2008 - By Daniel J. Wakin
Getting to Carnegie via YouTube

Traditionally, auditioning for an orchestra means appearing alone  
onstage in a nerve-jangling performance before grizzled veteran  
musicians. In the Google way, it means posting on the company’s video- 
sharing site, YouTube, for online judging by the professionals and  
then, ultimately, the YouTube universe.

That second option is the main feature of a new marketing project by  
Google to bolster the organized presence of classical music on YouTube  
and promote the idea of online communities. And orchestras and  
professional musicians, poking around in the murky but fecund  
possibilities of the Internet, have jumped on board as a way to  
further their own educational and musical missions.

The project, called the YouTube Symphony Orchestra (www.youtube.com/symphony) 
, was announced on Monday in London and New York.

Boiled down, it has two essential parts. The composer Tan Dun has  
written a four-minute piece for orchestra. YouTube users are invited  
to download the individual parts for their instruments from the score,  
record themselves performing the music, then upload their renditions.  
After the entrants are judged, a mash-up of all the winning parts will  
be created for a final YouTube version of the piece.

In the project’s other prong, musicians will upload auditions from a  
prescribed list — for trumpeters, for example, an excerpt from the  
Haydn Concerto — for judging by a jury that Google says will include  
musicians from major orchestras like the Berlin Philharmonic and the  
London Symphony. Entrants have until Jan. 28 to upload their  
videos.The panel picks a short list of finalists, and YouTube users,  
“American Idol”-style, choose the winners, who are flown to Carnegie  
Hall in April for a concert conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, the  
music director of the San Francisco Symphony. Google will arrange for  
visas and pay costs.

Officials of the project refused to discuss any aspect of the overall  
cost, but the Carnegie Hall concert alone is likely to be well into  
six figures. Mr. Thomas and Mr. Tan said their fees were not beyond  
the ordinary.

Users will be encouraged to comment on one another’s videos in the  
hope that communities will grow. In other aspects, London Symphony  
musicians will provide online instruction on how to play the Tan  
parts, in the spirit of master classes. YouTubers can play along with  
music-minus-one videos of his piece. Mr. Tan has prepared video clips  
of himself silently conducting each section of the orchestra, staring  
into the camera as if it were a viewer playing an instrument, to help  
prepare auditioners.

“The idea is to put together the world’s first collaborative online  
orchestra” and encourage musicians of all types and abilities around  
the world, said Ed Sanders, YouTube’s project marketing director for  
Europe, the Middle East and Africa and the person in charge of the  
effort. “It’s collaboration in a way and a medium never seen, both  
with sound and video.”

Another aim is the “serendipity of discovery,” Mr. Sanders said. “It  
would be a dream come true to find a trombone player in Hong Kong who  
had a rare talent, but nobody knew.”

Beyond helping the world’s brass players, the YouTube Symphony project  
fits in with Google’s business interests.

“They want to make their properties even more relevant to all types of  
people in all types of places doing all types of things,” said Scott  
H. Kessler, an equities analyst at Standard & Poor’s who follows  
Google. It also potentially “takes the edge off” recent perceptions  
that Google is not living up to its credo of “do no evil,” he said.

More specifically, the foray into music is in keeping with Google’s  
strategy to gussy up YouTube content and thus make the site more  
attractive to advertisers. Google has been disappointed by revenues  
from YouTube, which it bought in 2006.

So it sponsored a presidential debate and made a recent deal to put  
MGM films and television on YouTube, to move it past associations with  
lowest-common-denominator material like pranks, pratfalls and cats  
drinking out of toilet bowls.

“They are migrating from that to becoming a repository of serious  
content,” said Youssef Squali, an Internet analyst at Jefferies &  
Company in New York. The classical music project brings buzz as well  
as traffic, he added. “They’re able to monetize traffic through  
advertising, at no cost.”

The effort has Mr. Thomas, who is serving as artistic adviser, as its  
most prominent figure from the classical music world. He has long been  
involved in using media to spread classical music, from his days on  
live television conducting the New York Philharmonic Young People’s  
Concerts to his DVD, television and online didactic programs under the  
title “Keeping Score” with the San Francisco Symphony.

He said he hoped that the citizen musicians on YouTube would make  
connections, that nonmusicians would discover the breadth and joys of  
classical music, and that professional musicians would have a new way  
of expressing themselves.

“I know this is going to lead toward people discovering more what the  
music really is,” Mr. Thomas said. YouTube already is a vast  
repository of performances by musicians and orchestras famous and  
unknown, historical and contemporary.

Mr. Tan called the project a “revolutionary idea” that could bridge  
music’s past and the present. He said his piece had mechanical  
percussive sounds that are relevant to young people today and motifs  
from classical music, like a reference to the first theme of  
Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3, “Eroica.”

Google lists a number of orchestras as partners, including those  
judging entries or potentially contributing material to the Web site.  
Conservatories are also listed, although the extent of their role  
beyond advertising the site is unclear.

The London Symphony, which sees its involvement as an extension of its  
educational programs, said it was not being paid for participating.  
And New York Philharmonic players will volunteer their time in judging  
entries, as well as in possibly devising material for the YouTube  
Symphony Web site, said the orchestra spokesman, Eric Latzky.

“We see a great symbiotic relationship with this project,” Mr. Latzky  
said, “and we see great potential to inspire a kind of new worldwide  
interest and enthusiasm for classical music.” Exposing the  
Philharmonic musicians to people in countries where the orchestra  
tours was another plus, he said.

“I really do applaud Google for trying this, and I’m sure there’s  
benefit for them,” Mr. Latzky said. “If they’re successful, then maybe  
it can help make classical music more successful.”