YouTube is looking for a few good musicians to audition for what it is calling the world's first online orchestra.

The Google-owned video-sharing website, in a posting on the YouTube blog late on Monday, invited musicians to submit audition videos to a newly created YouTube Symphony Orchestra channel at youtube.com/user/symphony.

"Video entries will be combined into the first-ever collaborative virtual performance, and people around the world will select their favorites to perform at New York's Carnegie Hall in April 2009," YouTube said.

"The YouTube Symphony Orchestra will transform individual performances into a global symphony and change the way musicians connect over the Internet," it added.

YouTube said the audition piece for the online orchestra was called The Internet Symphony, an original work by China's Tan Dun, who composed the score for the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

A second audition piece may be a classical work of the musician's choosing.

The deadline for video auditions is January 28, 2009.

YouTube said members of leading orchestras around the world will narrow the entries to a group of semifinalists and YouTube users will be invited to vote for the favourites in February.

The winners will be invited to take part in a three-day classical music learning summit in New York culminating in the Carnegie Hall performance.

YouTube said the April 15, 2009 performance at Carnegie Hall would be directed by conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, music director of the San Francisco Symphony.

AFP