The 90-strong international orchestra built through the YouTube video-sharing site will make its debut at New York’s Carnegie Hall tomorrow evening. The video will be available on YouTube on Thursday. All 90 musicians auditioned for their place in the orchestra through YouTube, and also went on to practice for their concert at home while getting advice and lessons from some of the world’s top musicians over the Internet.
The orchestra has had three days to rehearse together, and will be playing pieces from Gabrieli, Bach, Mozart, Brahms, Villa Lobos and John Cage. “Everyone in the orchestra clearly has had a lot of experience playing their instrument,” said Michael Tilson Thomas, the orchestra’s Grammy Award-winning conductor and music director for the San Francisco Symphony.
Thomas added: “Some of them are vastly experienced ensemble players in chamber music and orchestral music, some have much less experience,” he said. “Some have other professions, including being physicians, poker players and financial analysts.” More than 3,000 auditions were submitted through YouTube in December and January.
Judges from the world’s top orchestras narrowed it down to 200, and YouTube users made the final selections. The YouTube Symphony Orchestra channel has been viewed 15 million times so far.
Result for: financial analyst
After being unveiled a couple of weeks ago at the very consumer attractive price of $199 USD, the iPhone 3G is set to go on sale next month through Apple and AT&T.
According to new reports, it appears however that AT&T is subsidizing the phone, over $400 USD in some cases, just to be able to reap in the benefits of a 2 year contract including data plans.
Oppenheimer financial analyst Yair Reimer writes that as a general rule of thumb, wireless carriers subsidize the price of smartphones by about $200 USD and make it back from expensive data plans. AT&T it appears though, is losing $325-425 for each unit sold and could be buying each phone from Apple for as much $724 USD for the 16GB model.
Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster also wrote a report estimating that Apple will make about $466 USD per iPhone. Bernstein Research’s Toni Sacconaghi, in a separate report says he anticipates Apple is selling each phone at $700 USD.
