Corey Pierce

It used to take three things to get to Carnegie Hall: Practise, practise and practise. It still does, but now you can add YouTube to that list. Thanks to a program launched by the online video website, Calgary violinist Donovan Seidle’s thousands of hours of practise (and the video he uploaded) has earned him the opportunity to play at Carnegie Hall with the YouTube Symphony in April. His audition video was chosen from over 3,000 entries.

“I think [the YouTube Symphony] is a really cool idea,” Seidle says. “The prospect of playing at Carnegie Hall really appealed to me. It still really appeals to me. I’m looking forward to having the opportunity to play there.”

The YouTube Symphony put out the call for musicians from around the world to post audition videos on YouTube.com. A panel of judges including San Francisco Symphony conductor Michael Tilson Thomas and members of the London Symphony Orchestra narrowed the field down to 200 candidates. This is far different from most orchestral auditions, where candidates must fly to the city where the auditions are taking place and play from behind a screen. Then YouTube pushed the envelope even further — YouTube Symphony put a call out to YouTubers worldwide to choose the symphony members by voting for their favourite audition videos.

“It is certainly a unique way of choosing an orchestra,” Seidle says. “It makes it a little like a popularity contest, but then again, anyone can hear skill and precision. I think YouTube is going to end up with a really great orchestra, and I look forward to working with those musicians. Today, being more versatile is a very good thing, to be able to diversify the groups that you’re in is really important.”

Seidle is currently the assistant concertmaster for the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra and music director of the Kensington Sinfonia. He will join almost 100 musicians from Australia, Korea and Ukraine to play a concert in Carnegie Hall on Wednesday, April 15. The program has a little bit of everything, including Internet Symphony No. 1 “Eroica,” orchestrated especially for the concert by Chinese composer Tan Dun, who was also the composer of the score for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Thomas said in a video address on YouTube, “I’m looking forward to this program, which has music for big orchestra [and] orchestra with electronics. It has improvisation, it has pieces for strings and for brass, music that comes from long, long ago and some music that has been written specially for this occasion.”

While Seidle anticipates more more of these Internet orchestras in the future, he does see some problems with the process. “Anyone out on the Internet could be judging you on anything from your hair to the quality of your video, completely discounting your playing,” he says. “They are judging you on things that the classical orchestral world has made sure to eliminate from their auditions, such as race or sex or age.”

Seidle says he enjoyed reading the comments from everyone who viewed his video, everything from “nice shirt” to someone who said he heard some Norwegian influence in the beginning of Seidle’s rendition of Paganini’s “Caprice No. 20.”

Seidle says he will not only enjoy the experience of playing at Carnegie Hall under an internationally renowned conductor, but also the opportunity to network with the musicians.

“These are musicians from wildly different backgrounds and disciplines,” he says. “They’re into hip hop and electronica and blending their classical acoustic instruments with these styles. I’m really looking forward to learning as much as I can from them.”