The New Orchestra: Symphonic Innovation Around the World

The world’s biggest concert, what Venezuela has that everyone needs, and why YouTube is the unsuspected shortcut to Carnegie Hall.

Today, we’re doing something different. Instead of the usual indie up-and-comer, we’re going back to the idea that the best of innovation comes from taking tradition and flipping it on its head. In music, it doesn’t get more traditional than orchestras. So, today, we’re looking at three groundbreaking ways of orchestrating orchestras.

HAMBURG PHILHARMONIC

Last Monday, the Hamburg Philahrmonic put on a grand show — in fact, it was the world’s biggest music performance.

Instead of their usual venue, the 100 musicians took to the city, dispensing across 50 locations, replicating the layout of a concert hall stage on a much larger scale.

Overlooking this grand stage from the top of St. Michaelis Church, Hamburg’s highest point, the conductor worked her magic.

The musicians themselves were connected with each other via live video feed, with flatscreens propped right next to their sheet music — a wonderful metaphor for the classical-two-point-ohness of the stunt.

Watch the teaser video to really grasp the brilliance of this endeavor and the scale of the performance. Genius.

via GOOD

GUSTAVO DUDAMEL AT TED

Gustavo Dudamel is known as one of the most exciting and animated conductors of our time. He is also one of the youngest.

At last month’s TED, he led a truly jaw-dropping performance that elicited a standing ovation like no other — he conducted The Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra, composed of the best high school musicians from Venezuela’s life-changing music program, El Sistema, of which Dudamel himself is a product.

The performance is nothing short of awe-inspiring. But, more importantly, it’s a testament to the need — the urgency — of preserving and advancing music education, of harnessing youth talent, of fostering the culture and the cult of musical genius.

GOOGLE COLLABORATIVE ORCHESTRA

We firmly believe collaboration is the future of every aspect of culture. And Google is taking the lead on the music front. Last week, they announced the winners of the world’s first online collaborative orchestra.

The contest called for professional and amateur musicians to “audition” for the 90 spots on the YouTube Symphony Orchestra. Entries came from over 30 countries on six continents, with musicians playing some 26 different instruments. The 90 international winners, who will travel to New York to perform at Carnegie Hall, were selected by the YouTube community and a panel of performers from the world’s most renowned orchestras.

You can see all the winning audition videos on the YouTube Symphony Orchestra Channel. They are, needless to say, phenomenal.

The orchestra will participate in a collaborative summit for classical music in New York next month, wrapping up with their Carnegie Hall concert — which, by the way, will be conducted by none other than San Francisco Symphony Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas, also founder of New World Symphony  and Principal Guest Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra.

Here’s to making collaboration the new classic.

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Monday Music Muse: Blame Ringo

Why Ringo Starr may not be the lovable Liverpudlian the world’s most liberal media portray him to be.

In 2007, four fantastic musicians came together in Brisbane to form an equally fantastic band. It was called Goodnight Vienna. Then they got a legal threat — from none other than Richard Starkey Jr., better known to the rest of us as Ringo Starr. Turns out, Goodnight Vienna was the name of Ringo’s fourth studio album and although he “thoroughly enjoyed the music,” he felt “obligated to dissuade any profiteering which resulted from the use of his intellectual property.”

Ahem.

So, naturally, the band changed its name to Blame Ringo.

Genius.

Today, Blame Ringo is on a mission to seek revenge on Ringo — which, of course, is just a tongue-in-cheek front for imparting their excellent music on the unsuspecting world. And excellent it is — if Fleet Foxes, Beck, I’m From Barcelona and Guillemots went on tour together, Blame Ringo would be that tour — vocals that flow from hauntingly cloudiness to peppy sunlight, guitar solos that can put George Harrison to shame, and an occasional jazzy trumpet that’s like the dash of cinnamon on top of your cappuccino, taking it from delicious to pure delight.

And, yes, there may be a bit of that Beatlesque vibe in there, too.

But what we loved most about the band was their wonderful and clever promo for Garble Arch, the first single from their debut album Lucky Number 9 — A Day in the Life of Abbey Road, an utterly delightful stop-motion video shot on, yes, the Abbey Road.

So if you’re a Beatles aficionado, an appreciator of quirk, or just a lover of really, really good music, grab Lucky Number 9 and join the conspiracy. And take a moment to explore the band website, full of delightfully hilarious nuggets of anti-Ringo propaganda.

Monday Music Muse: First Aid Kit

How two Swedish teenagers are redefining indie-folk rock, or what mountain peasants have to do with Fiona Apple.

For most teenage girls, the world of indie music is reduced to the angst-driven overconsumption of Fiona Apple wannabes, preferably blasted in volume that sparks daily yell-fests with mom. But for Swedish duo First Aid Kit, composed of sisters Klara and Johanna Söderberg, 15 and 18, respectively, indie music is for the making. And make it they do — brilliantly, at that.

Their music, indie folk-rock with a distinct Scandinavian twist, sounds like something that belongs on the Juno soundtrack — boldly quirky vocals, backed by an infectious acoustic guitar, with the occasional perfect drum beat. And while the duo is altogether phenomenal, we were particularly taken with their cover of Fleet Foxes’ Tiger Mountain Peasant Song — an extraordinary outpour of vocal delight, utterly chill-inducing in a way that blows all the Fleet Foxes covers of late out of the water.

First Aid Kit‘s debut EP, Drunken Trees, releases tomorrow. But if you absolutely cannot wait, you can thank Jeff Bezos and pre-order it on Amazon today.

Thanks, Minna

Monday Music Muse: Peter Buffett

Something delightfully different.

In an effort to branch out of our typical indie-folk-rock niche, we’re doing something a little different today. Something a bit more mellow and grown-up and brimming with the settled contemplative power of an award-winning composer who’s lived through commercial jingles and critical acclaim.

That’s exactly the sort of vibe you’ll find in composer-turned-vocal-expérimentateur Peter Buffett‘s latest album, Imaginary Kingdom. It’s a hard-to-classify but rather successful intersection of seeming opposites – from the keyboard magic of Pink Floyd‘s Dark Side of The Moon period to the dreamy tromp of Death Cab for Cutie.

Among the hidden gems up Buffett’s sleeve is the off-album Anything, featuring Akon, which even echoes some of Byrne & Eno‘s socially-conscious lyrical sensibility and ambient electronica.

(And from the department of interesting asides, a tidbit on the Imaginary Kingdom album cover: It was designed by LA-based artist, Lois Keller whose whimsical illustrations and paintings have graced the silos of such high-culture institutions as The Milwaukee Ballet and the Cincinnati Opera, as well as commercial darlings like Disney stores around the world.)

So go ahead, raise your own cultural brow with some music for grown-ups. It’s okay.