Transcriber: Kim Key Reviewer: Denise RQ
( Classical music)
( Applause)
Hello and thank you.
This talk is going to be about democratizing classical music,
except I don't know that much about classical music.
I am a film maker,
as you have just seen,
and my reference to classical music is mainly that is great for sound tracks.
The classical world has this hard-to-reach, elitist feel for me,
it's like a club that I can't enter;
some of you might feel the same.
And when I find myself in a concert with classical music,
it's like everything is in black and white.
But then I met the Copenhagen Philharmonic.
They are not your typical Philharmonic Orchestra.
To me, they were playing
in Dolby Surround Sound and in Technicolor.
It was I guess your classic boy-meets-orchestra story.
(Laughter)
To cut to a couple of months later,
I found myself on the subway in Copenhagen
with 30 musicians, trying to direct this madness,
and I realized
that this was really something special.
That morning, they played Peer Gynt's "Morning Suite" 17 times
in the morning commute crossing Copenhagen.
The film came out,
and I felt really like I was in the middle of this,
when the film came out,
people from all of the world started commenting it.
And one of the most common things people would say was:
"I wish I'd been on that train,"
" I wish I'd been part of that,"
and we could totally understand;
we've been there.
It was great.
It was like there was this real need for people to be close to classical music.
And we thought: "Well, how can we facilitate that?
What can we do?
We decided: "Let's make an orchestra that's online,
and that you can play with, interact with,
and that anyone can join."
So we did that, and it's called The World Online Orchestra.
I'm going to jump over here to do a live demo of it.
So we can see what that's all about.
We're going straight to the Internet now, on Chrome,
and you can go ahead and try this afterwards.
This beta version of the World Online Orchestra
was built with help from Canada, from Helios Design Labs,
- super programmers and designers -
and of course the daring musicians of the Copenhagen Philharmonic.
So, I'm just going to-- without further due
(Classical music)
jump in.
(Classical music)
What we're hearing now is
Beethoven's Seventh [Symphony] second movement,
also known from "The King's Speech" fairly enough.
I can browse the different musicians,
and listen to their individual voices recorded separately.
See, also people who are not playing.
If I want, I can go ahead and try to build my own ensemble.
Here, I can pick and choose up to five musicians at a time.
Here's the cello, let's begin with that.
Let's take the viola,
and the tuba maybe.
Now, if I was a musician, I could take part [in this]
like that, "Hello TED!"
(Fakes playing the violin)
(Laughter)
I'm not [playing the violin].
A lot of people wanted to contribute, and we've started to pull some people in.
This is from earlier this year, from a presentation in Cannes,
"The Harmonium [in my Memory]",
with Phillipe, a great guy.
And also maybe something you might recognize
is a contribution made just yesterday.
If I can find it...
Here!
Shot with an iPhone. The great Kathy Robb.
(Violin music)
So this is a way of democratizing classical music,
and we feel that the WOO could be for anyone.
It could be from anywhere,
and of course also any instrument.
I mean who says it has to be classical?
We can imagine this. This is a common organ 64'.
(Laughter)
It's up to whoever wants to be part of the WOO.
This is...
...of course, something for people who don't have an orchestra,
so that we can imagine this girl from India
playing together with this guy from Alaska.
The WOO, for me and for the orchestra of the Copenhagen Philharmonic,
is an imagined collective symphony that can evolve overtime,
that can open the doors and put you and I in the middle of it,
in the middle of the music.
We want this to be
an infinite amount of ensembles that can be discovered,
and perhaps we can even include and inspire
existing and future musicians
so that many more of us would become
not only close to classical music but in the middle of it, like I did.
Thank you.
(Applause)