Mentors for YouTube Symphony Orchestra 2011
Some of the world’s finest musicians will travel to Australia to mentor and join the young players of the YouTube Symphony Orchestra 2011 in a week-long summit of rehearsals, concerts and masterclasses from March 14-21 at the Sydney Opera House. The intensive week of collaboration will culminate in a performance on March 20 – streamed live on YouTube – conducted by the ensemble’s artistic director, Michael Tilson Thomas. Mentors for the YouTube Symphony Orchestra are drawn largely from the world’s finest ensembles, including principals from the London Symphony Orchestra (clarinetist Andrew Marriner), the Berlin Philharmonic (horn player Sarah Willis), the Vienna Philharmonic (trombonist Ian Bousfield), the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (oboist Eugene Izotov), and the Australian Chamber Orchestra (violinist Richard Tognetti), among many others. Renowned soloist musicians such as organist Cameron Carpenter and trumpeter Håkan Hardenberger will also be on hand for expert guidance and support.
The YouTube Symphony Orchestra (youtube.com/symphony) is a global online collaborative ensemble in which musicians share their knowledge and the experience of making music, with leading classical artists lending their support as mentors and fellow performers. Based on thousands of video auditions from around the world, the 2011 orchestra brings together 101 musicians from 30 countries; the players range in age from 14 to 49, and they include amateurs and professionals, students and teachers – with some never having traveled beyond their home country.
To Sarah Willis – principal horn of the Berlin Philharmonic, which she joined in 2001 as the orchestra’s first female brass player – the YouTube Symphony mentoring experience feels like “a gift” for mentor and young musician alike. “It will be an invaluable experience for the players: to meet and make music with musicians from all over the world,” she says. “It’s fascinating to learn about different musical traditions and cultures from people you are sitting next to and performing with. It’s a challenge as a mentor to help create one unified sound and musical concept out of these very talented but different players. So I am looking forward to seeing how we do in Sydney. I think all of the mentors will probably agree: The best thing will be meeting all these great musicians from all over. I’m really looking forward to hanging out with my horn section and getting to know them.”
The complete list of mentors and soloists coaching and performing with the YouTube Symphony Orchestra 2011 is as follows:
Mason Bates: soloist, composer
William Barton: didgeridoo soloist
Roger Benedict: viola mentor from the Sydney Symphony Orchestra
Kees Boersma: double-bass mentor from the Sydney Symphony Orchestra
Ian Bousfield: trombone mentor from the Vienna Philharmonic
Cameron Carpenter: organ soloist
Håkan Hardenberger: trumpet soloist
Eugene Izotov: oboe mentor from Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Colin Jacobsen: violin mentor and soloist (member of Brooklyn Rider)
Stefan Jackiw: violin soloist
Zoya Leybin: violin mentor (former member of the San Francisco Orchestra)
Andrew Marriner: clarinet mentor from the London Symphony Orchestra
Edwin Outwater: assistant conductor
Ilyich Rivas: guest conductor
Wilma Smith: violin mentor, concertmaster of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Synergy: percussion mentors
Michael Tilson Thomas: artistic director/conductor
Richard Tognetti: violin soloist and mentor (artistic director of the Australian Chamber Orchestra)
Tamás Varga: cello mentor from the Vienna Philharmonic
Gerardo Vila: piano mentor, faculty of the Youth Orchestra of the Americas
Sarah Willis: horn mentor from the Berlin Philharmonic
Sydney Children’s Choir: soloists
The week’s concert finale on March 20, which will be streamed live on YouTube, will present an international array of compositions, ranging from works by Bach, Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Stravinsky, Britten and Ginastera to those by the Australian-born Percy Grainger, contemporary Australian composer Nigel Westlake, and the Iranian Siamak Aghaei. Throughout the week, the YouTube Symphony Orchestra 2011 will celebrate musical education by offering online master classes with orchestras across the globe and on-site classes for Australian musicians during the summit. The program brings the creative multimedia and collaborative qualities of YouTube to the classical music community, using the inherent egalitarianism of the internet to offer unique opportunities to musicians around the world.
“YouTube is bringing classical music to audiences far and wide in a really positive, exciting and cool way,” Sarah Willis observes. “Through modern technology, it’s reaching people who wouldn’t otherwise have a clue about the classical music world. This is why I support it so much; we have to invest in audiences of the future. YouTube is huge, and to be able to reach new audiences through such a popular medium is just fantastic and makes it global and fun. It’s great to feel a part of it.”
About YouTube
YouTube is the world’s most popular online video community, allowing millions of people to discover, watch and share original videos. YouTube provides a forum for people to connect, inform and inspire others across the globe and acts as a distribution platform for original content creators and advertisers large and small. YouTube LLC is based in San Bruno, Calif., and is a subsidiary of Google Inc.
Changing the face of the classical music audience
YouTube’s innovative, groundbreaking YouTube Symphony Orchestra project is both attracting and changing the face of the classical music audience. Many of the 10 million views on the YouTube Symphony Orchestra channel are from young people aged between 13 and 24. The channel provides a platform for musicians of all ages to flourish, share their creativity, and broadcast themselves.
Mission
YouTube is a unique platform for connecting artists around the world. Classical music brings people together and transcends language, and the YouTube Symphony Orchestra furthers YouTube’s original mission of cultivating an online community. The program marks the first time anyone has attempted to bring musicians around the world together through this type of technology.
Education
YouTube Symphony Orchestra’s partners, such as the London Symphony Orchestra, have already uploaded educational content in the form of master classes, which can be viewed on the YouTube Symphony Orchestra channel. With the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, YouTube is creating a platform for creative dialogue and instruction. Other institutions participating in the site’s classical music program include the Amsterdam School of Music, Barcelona’s Liceu, the Moscow Conservatory, and the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, among others.
Talent discovery
For musicians of all ages, nationalities and instruments, the YouTube Symphony Orchestra and summit offer unparalleled reach and the unique chance to perform in front of YouTube’s massive global audience. The participants are showcasing their talent, and their submissions are being seen by many of the world’s leading musicians and judged by a panel of experts from the London Symphony Orchestra and the orchestras of Berlin, Hong Kong, Sydney, New York and others. As the internet democratizes the process of discovering talent, the YouTube Symphony Orchestra provides musicians from unlikely places with a platform to showcase their art.
Tan Dan, Academy Award-winning composer of the film score for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, said at the project’s inception: “YouTube is the biggest stage on Earth, and I want to see what the world’s undiscovered musical geniuses will create on it.”
About the Sydney Opera House
In giving the world one of the 20th century’s greatest buildings, Jørn Utzon changed the creative and cultural landscape of Australia forever. The Sydney Opera House is committed to continuing the legacy of Utzon’s creative genius by creating, producing and presenting the most acclaimed, imaginative and engaging performing arts experiences from Australia and around the world – onsite, offsite and online. As the creative and cultural flagship of Australia, the Sydney Opera House is the place where imagination takes you.
www.youtube.com/symphony