YouTube Meets Carnegie Hall

YouTube has already transformed quite a few amateurs into popular professionals, but this may be the first time that the website has brought unknowns into such an historic and coveted venue. Of the 3,000 aspiring musicians that submitted audition videos, 96 were inducted into the YouTube Symphony Orchestra yesterday at a performance in New York's Carnegie Hall. The winners, coming from over 30 different countries, had only two days to practice with before playing before for a curious and sold out crowd of New Yorkers. Because of their varying backgrounds and minimal practice time, the YouTube orchestra stuck with the classics---performing a movement of Brahms and a movement of Tchaikovsky among other crowd favorites. "For us it's been something between a classical music summit conference (and) scout jamboree combined with speed dating," said conductor Michael Tilson Thomas.