Peabody cellist joins YouTube orchestra

"All different types of people auditioned - amateurs, young cellists, older cellists," Hsieh says. She could check out the competition; the competition, not to mention the universe, could check out her playing. She did not go for any fancy atmosphere on her video, just a basic video camera and the microphone on her computer. But she did allow room for a little something different.

After filming herself playing the cello part for the Tan Dun composition, Hsieh turned to the lyrical passage for cellos at the opening of Rossini's William Tell Overture. "I was really irritated at that point," she says. "I had been depressed about my playing. I thought I was a failure."

With that negativity in her head, Hsieh reached over to the computer to make sure everything was functioning, then made a funny little face at the camera before starting to play. "I thought it would be important to have a personality come through," she says. "I thought maybe people would vote for me."

Hsieh and her fellow YouTube Symphony mates will arrive in New York on April 12, travel and lodging expenses paid, to begin rehearsing with Tilson Thomas, music director of the San Francisco Symphony. "I don't even know what we're playing," the cellist says. The program is expected to be announced in about three weeks.

"I'm looking at this as a new possibility for bringing musicians together globally," Peabody's Morris says. "If it helps bring more interest to what we're doing in the classical music world, if it excites or re-energizes anybody about that world, I say go for it."

In a statement released yesterday, Tilson Thomas called the experience of judging the entries "a remarkably exciting process" that opened "a real window on the lives of music lovers everywhere."