Some 10,000 hours of video content is uploaded to YouTube every month. Obviously, the majority of that content isn’t original content created by the uploaders. Long story short – no one will ever be able to watch all of it and there’s hours of digging to be done to find genuine, interesting content.
One of the reasons that Viva Virtuoso was created on YouTube and for the platform’s global audience is that most of us on the creative team appreciate the mindboggling access to new, original content that YouTube has been offering us as viewers and listeners over the past decade. The platform is accessible to viewers and creators alike, and we’ve found plenty of our own new and old musical favorites on YouTube over the past several years.
Over the past several months though, as the popularity of video has been on a historic rise, we’ve noticed that the sort of content we love and are interested in following regularly is getting tougher to find, simply due to the sheer volume of content available.
Unfortunately, there’s no quick fix to this and we often spend hours down the rabbit hole that is YouTube, looking for what we call ‘YouTube gems,’ from innovative musical performances to captivating short documentaries and rare, decades-old interviews.
Another great way to uncover these rare gems has come through following and interacting with like-minded people and groups on social networks and specialty blogs – the latter of which is also a little too rare for our taste.
As our musically fanatical small team was busy, as usual, finding these diamonds in the YouTube rough, we realized it would be a good idea to share some of our finds not only on official Viva Virtuoso social media channels, but also in a roundup that we plan on running weekly on our blog from now on.
Ladies and gentleman, before we invite you to share your rare musical finds with us, we present the first weekly Viva Virtuoso YouTube channel picks. Some of these are our newer finds and some are favorites that members of our team have been following for a while. While we hope our new-found fans subscribe to the Viva Virtuoso YouTube channel, we also ask you all subscribe to some of the channels we’re fans of, as a sign of support for these tireless musicians providing us all with hours of wonderful entertainment.
Jazz at Lincoln Center
Anyone who dares call themselves a fan of jazz or architecture knows of the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts. Founded and built by a group of New York City civic leaders under the initiative of John D. Rockefeller III in the mid 1950s, the Lincoln Center is one of the meccas of jazz and performing arts.
Perhaps we’re aging quickly and easily impressed by the connected world we live in today, but the Lincoln Center’s jazz-focused YouTube channel, to us, is clear, almost palpable evidence of the awe-inspiring value technology and the world wide web have offered us in the 21st century. We remember a time when small groups of music aficionados would hunt down recordings of live performances, often bootleg editions, from the Lincoln Center. Today, that’s all available on the Center’s official, well-kept YouTube channel dedicated to jazz – a fact almost unfathomable to any jazz fan born after 1985.
The Jazz at Lincoln Center, despite regularly uploading marvelous renditions of global jazz favorites by some of the best performers of our time, has just under 30,000 subscribers. We urge you to give the video below a whirl and subscribe if you like what you hear (or if you’re not tone deaf).
Brooklyn Duo
Our second pick of the week is right up the Viva Virtuoso alley and the type of rare find that is the reason behind our extensive YouTube activity as viewers on YouTube. This piano and cello duo out of Brooklyn, as the name makes so obvious, brings us soothing renditions of 21st century mainstream hits, most of which our on average middle aged crew never would have heard of were it not for young musicians such as these.
Admittedly, they first caught our eye with some well-known 20th century hits, although we tremendously appreciate this introduction to newer music. A lot like Viva Virtuoso, they seem to be performing straight out of their living room, with gusto, although they have a whopping 512,000 subscribers. We figure a few more can’t hurt though.
If you’re a fan of plain old classical music with a little zest, the duo also have a Classical Brooklyn channel that we’ve been enjoying thoroughly for the past few weeks. There’s a de-lovely Moonlight Sonata on there, if you’re in the mood one of these Autumn evenings. A round of applause and a howling “bravissimo” to the Brooklyn Duo from us at Viva Virtuoso – we look forward to many more encores to come!
2Cellos
Believe it or not, some of our very international team members have been fans of this particular duo since they first appeared on YouTube several years ago, as two completely unknown brilliant young musicians out of Croatia.
When classically trained cellists Luka Šulić and Stjepan Hauser, dubbed 2Cellos, first began uploading videos of their cello duo arrangements of 20th century pop and rock hits, most notably Michael Jackson’s Smooth Criminal in 2010, they were somewhat surprised by the warm welcome they received on social networks from southeast European audiences. The official video has since racked up over 26 million views on YouTube, so if you haven’t seen it yet, you’ve got to wonder how.
Little did they know that, within months, they would be invited by none other than Elton John to perform with him on stage. Since then, the duo has performed on stages worldwide with world renowned musicians and been included on the soundtrack of Glee. This year, 2Cellos released their fourth album, Score, recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra.
The two have stated in interviews that they “love AC/DC as much as Bach,” a sentiment that made us all nod with approval. It’s young musicians like this duo that keep both classical and 20th century music alive and well.
