An article about the first digital music competition in The New York times. By Adam Baer

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April 12, 2001
A Music Competition Without Jitters
By ADAM BAER
IN 1971, technology was the last thing on the mind of Yoon-il Auh. A 10-year-old violin prodigy in
South Korea, he had seemed destined for a performing career since he began playing four years
earlier. After the soloist Isaac Stern heard Yoon-il play during a tour of Asia, he urged him to move
to New York to attend the Juilliard School.
For Mr. Auh and his family, the decision was a no-brainer. They moved to the United States and
almost overnight, the dream of a performing career became a realistic goal.
By 1983, however, things had not gone exactly as Mr. Auh had hoped. He breezed through the
psychological trials that successful virtuosos must weather (life in windowless practice rooms,
fiercely competitive peers, Paganini caprices). His problem was physical: he awoke one day with
severe weakness in his hands, a condition that worsened and left doctors baffled.
Playing the violin for more than an hour at a time, never mind applying vibrato, became
impossible, which forced him to abandon the pursuit of a solo career.
Today, Mr. Auh uses the Internet to showcase promising musicians in a way that he hopes will help
their careers. He is the co-founder of Web Concert Hall (www.webconcerthall .com), the first Web
site to administer its own international music competition. Unlike better-known classical
competitions, like the International Tchaikovsky Competition held every year in Moscow, the 2000
International Web Concert Hall Competition does not set age limits, and the applicants are judged
on submitted recordings instead of rounds of live performances.
It also does not offer prize money. Instead, Web Concert Hall winners are offered publicity in the
form of promotional e-mail to top arts managers. The contest gives winners a practical, lasting
means of transcending the traditional competition circuit: worldwide exposure through on-
demand audio streams of their performances.
Online competitions also offer an alternative to the rat race of other competitions. ''Live
competitions have drawbacks,'' Mr. Auh said. ''Your success depends on how you feel on that day
and on your ability to travel extensively, which can require a period of recuperation.
Psychologically, it's also a lot of pressure.''

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David Hurwitz, a music journalist and executive editor of the music site Classicstoday.com, said
that while the pressure of live performances was a necessary hurdle for virtuosos, the idea of Web
Concert Hall was a good one. ''The use of the Internet to give competition winners general
exposure to the classical-music community certainly seems more valuable than a monetary prize,''
he said.
Running a Web site may seem like an unlikely vocation for someone like Mr. Auh, who has a
master's degree from Juilliard. After his performance career was sidetracked, Mr. Auh studied
computer programming and education at Columbia University, a transition that he said was not
unusual.
''At first, I was surprised to find I wasn't the only serious musician studying computing at
Columbia,'' Mr. Auh said. ''The personalities who pursued both fields were very similar. They
enjoyed working alone in a closed room all night trying to be as creative as possible. They loved to
compete with each other to see who could write the leanest code or play the cleanest scales in the
shortest amount of time. Many of them only ate junk food, living in their parents' basements well
into their 30's. And many didn't have a girlfriend or even know how to get one.''
At Columbia, Mr. Auh met Dr. Robert Taylor, his dissertation adviser and, later, Web Concert
Hall's co-founder.
Dr. Taylor, a professor at Teachers College and the founder of the department of computing in
education, is somewhat of a polymath himself: a concert singer of classical music, he obtained
advanced degrees in literature and divinity at the University of Chicago, then took on physics,
computing and eventually education, developing his skills by teaching mathematics in East Africa
for 10 years.
The idea for Web Concert Hall evolved while Mr. Auh worked on several projects with Dr. Taylor,
including an educational ear-training application called Wiz Ear and a Web database of audio clips
from more than 200 of Bach's cantatas.
They started Web Concert Hall in 1998. Mr. Auh divides his time between the site, his job as an
associate director for distance learning at New York University and his own software company,
Intrepid Pixels.
''Technology is not an end in itself,'' Dr. Taylor said. ''It is a means to accomplish what is important
to you.
''For me, that entails using it to help people living in a global climate learn in an interdisciplinary
manner about classical music and the arts.''
Web Concert Hall has sponsored three annual competitions, awarding prizes to eight musicians.
''It's hard to really measure the tangible benefits of this prize so far, but Web Concert Hall helps get
you out there, and that is important,'' said Albert Tiu, a pianist from the Philippines who is one of

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three winners of the site's 2000 competition.
Some Web Concert Hall winners have also taken top prizes at more established competitions like
the Tchaikovsky, but Mr. Tiu said that his victories had been less helpful than he had hoped. ''I
often find it detrimental to list the other awards I've won,'' said Mr. Tiu, 31, who has a Juilliard
education and numerous medals under his belt. ''Some people in the music industry have an image
of a competition winner as a technical robot with a learned musicality. That image may never
change, but at least this competition provides a possible way into a scene from which most other
competitions are removed.''
The people behind Web Concert Hall don't want simply to change the site of classical competitions;
they want to change the rules.
According to Mr. Auh, the proliferation of performance-based music competitions perpetuates the
intense environment for developing artists that he said had claimed him as a casualty.
Mr. Auh also holds competitions accountable for inspiring an unfortunate breed of musician: those
who emphasize prodigious showmanship over artistry.
''The truth is that I don't even remember who won the last Tchaikovsky Competition,'' he said.
''And keep in mind: the names of our winners aren't just posted on the site. Their music is, too.''
Photo: Yoon-il Auh, left, and Dr. Robert Taylor are co-founders of Web Concert Hall, an online
classical music competition site. The contestants submit recordings, and winners' performances
are made available on the site. (Ting-Li Wang/The New York Times)
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