If “music be the food of love” then we are surrounded by an orchestral smorgasbord. 101 musicians from 33 countries flew into to Sydney over the weekend and are ensconced in the Sydney Opera House, rehearsing like crazy. 

The grand finale concert will explode onto the Concert Hall stage from 8pm on Sunday night (eastern time) and will be streamed on YouTube, unmetered on BPM as well as on the BPM channel on your T-Box or Internet connected TV. All thanks to the unique partnership of YouTube and Telstra who provided all the connections.

The race to prepare the Sydney Opera House was won by the Telstra team. They successfully installed a Wireless Managed LAN into all of the external and internal areas to be used by the Orchestra and the public during the week, including the Concert Hall, the Utzon Room, the Playhouse, Studio and the Western Forecourt.

The teamwork that we have seen across all parts of the business has been extraordinary, and on Sunday it all comes to a screen near you. Very near to you, actually, because the concert will be streaming to your smart phone via a new YTSO App. Just search on YTSO in the Apple App store or the Android App store to find this free app.

Here is how it was explained to me: The Telstra team has installed and enabled super-fast internet connection through fibre optics to the Sydney Opera House. There, a huge broadcast team will video the concert and stream it through Telstra’s DVN to Chief Entertainment. These amazing people turn the video footage into an internet stream, using encoders that have been optimised for YouTube’s multi-bitrates streaming service. (They have also provided all of the edit facilities for all the daily updates that you have been seeing!)The signal is then split, one stream going live into the BPM channel for Telstra web viewers and T-Box owners, and one for YouTube for the rest of the world.

This video shows what the performers have been up to for the last few days. Check it out!

And don’t forget to watch the YTSO concert, live on BPM and YouTube.