YouTube, the Web’s biggest video-sharing service, announced a new initiative called YouTube Symphony Orchestra, which involves access to videos with various artists performing different symphonies.

Looking to turn it into a great experience, YouTube teamed up with the London Symphony Orchestra, Carnegie Hall, Grammy Award-winning conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, Academy Award-winning and Olympics theme composer Tan Dun, world-renowned pianist Lang Lang, the first YouTube Symphony Orchestra Global Ambassador, and also many other stars of classical music and other leading institutions.

The plan is to receive videos from musicians all across the world. Each one will have to send two videos with their own style – one with their interpretation of an original Tan Dun composition, written specifically for this challenge, and another one to demonstrate their musical and technical talent.

The videos will be accepted between December 1, 2008 and January 28, 2009 and from that point on, the YouTube community will have one week to vote the semifinalists.

The winners will get the chance to participate in a three-day classic music summit in New York, accompanied by Michael Tilson Thomas and many other internationally known performers, and even take part in a Carnegie Hall performance scheduled for April 15, 2009.

The competition was received with great enthusiasm by the artists involved in the project. "YouTube is the biggest stage on Earth, and I want to see what the world's undiscovered musical geniuses will create on it," said Chinese contemporary classical composer Tan Dun, the Oscar-winning composer of the film "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."