ABOUT
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| SYNOPSIS Meet the first-ever YouTube Symphony Orchestra, young musicians plucked from obscurity when online auditions win them a coveted Carnegie Hall concert slot. With just 2 days to rehearse a huge program under classical masters Michael Tilson Thomas and Tan Dun, the musicians face language barriers and jet lag in a daunting schedule. This is the uplifting story of the YouTube Symphony Orchestra and their inspiring debut. Q & A WITH STEPHEN HIGGINS, DIRECTOR OF "THE ROAD TO CARNEGIE HALL." Why did you make this film? Music’s a powerful mystery. I don’t have musical ability, but am in awe of people who do. So the announcement of the first YouTube Symphony Orchestra, to pluck talented musicians from obscurity around the world, got me thinking about who they are. I thought of intense, studious people in remote towns and big cities. It seemed especially cool that they would be so different from one another – rich and poor, in Asia, Europe and Latin America - but have this one thing in common, this drive to re-create the most eloquent music ever written. I just wanted to meet these people, and to enlarge them a little bit for other people to see. What was your interest in/knowledge of classical music prior to this film? Interest, highly emotional. Knowledge, anecdotal and unschooled. It came down to this: the act of a human creating a beautiful sound from an instrument is an almost magical thing – especially now that there are so many other ways to make music - and it seemed like that had to be noticed again. And that this was a cool way to show what people have in common, the passions they share. They’d probably disagree immensely with each other about so many things. But around music, they came together and sweated and worked hard and made something unforgettable. How did the film get started? It was a matter of contacting YouTube and beseeching them for access to the musicians and the process. Did you shoot all in New York? We met the musicians in 13 different countries before they came to New York. It was gorgeous. Then came New York, the city, and then tip-toeing through the rehearsals. |