YouTube Contest Offers Shot at Playing Carnegie Hall

For a site built on shots to the crotch and dogs riding skateboards, YouTube is classin’ up the joint for its new YouTube Symphony Orchestra contest. Rosen up your bow, because winners will get a chance to play Carnegie Hall.

From now until Jan. 28, 2009, users can submit videos of themselves playing two pieces of music. The first is The Internet Symphony, an original composition by Tan Dun written especially for this program (see him talking about the work in the embedded video). Entrants will also submit a separate piece of their choosing that best showcases their style.

Everyone who enters will be considered for a big, global video performance of Internet Symphony (not sure how that will be conducted), while experts from the London Symphony, Berlin Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, New York Philharmonic and other orchestras will narrow the field to semi-finalists. Once selected, the YouTube audience will pick their favorites and the winners will be invited to participate in a 3-day classical music camp of sorts, ending with a performance in Carnegie Hall.

In the quick-cut, in-your-face, extreme online video world we often live in, its nice to to see a contest celebrate something more, well, classic.