By Eric Woodhams, Detroit Symphony Orchestra

Hands-down, the best part of working at the Detroit Symphony Orchestra is hearing our amazing musicians perform in Orchestra Hall. The intimate connection between the stage and audience, the beauty and history of the building, and its acoustical warmth make every concert a joy to be a part of. As much as I love sitting in the Hall, nearly every week I happily and excitedly resort to what I consider the next-best seat in the building—the vintage Ikea armchair in my cubicle—to share our beloved DSO with the world during our Live from Orchestra Hall webcasts.

My cube (or “the command center,” as I like to call it) features all the tools I need to oversee the live webcast experience and interact with our online audience: a 27-inch widescreen monitor full of open windows, an iPad chirping from incoming tweets, and my phone buzzing with texts from the control room downstairs. It’s an awesome setup, and I’m very fortunate to have it.

Our series of webcasts, viewable online or on the new ‘DSO to Go’ mobile app, are a thrill to work. Upstairs in my command center, I constantly flip back and forth between different computer screens, monitoring posts from our friends on Twitter and Facebook, and I keep a special eye out for tweets using the hashtag #DSOLive (for non-Twitter folks, a hashtag is a popular way for users to I.D. a certain topic, event, or place). I can then respond directly and relay their posts to an interactive box on our player page. Throughout performances, I also pose questions, post program notes, and display fun facts about composers and our soloists in real-time as the music is played. It’s a complex number of things to quickly juggle at once, but incredibly fun and rewarding at the same time.

The DSO has a rich history of innovations in broadcasting (it was the first orchestra to air on radio nearly 90 years ago, followed by numerous legendary recordings), and our Digital Media team takes much pride in helping continue its legacy using the latest trending technologies. At the start of each webcast, I ask our online audience my favorite, simple question: “Where are you tuning in from today?”. To hear instant responses from people across the U.S., as well as countries like Germany, Spain, Dominican Republic, and Japan (just to name a few), is truly remarkable.

So far this season, we’ve had over 20,000 viewers from more than forty countries worldwide, and over 1,800 downloads of our mobile app in thirty seven countries, all made possible by the generous support of Knight Foundation.

We hope you can join us for a future webcast. To learn more and RSVP to our next Live from Orchestra Hall performance, please visit www.dso.org/live.

To download DSO to Go for your mobile device, simply search for “Detroit Symphony” in your app store, or follow this link to learn more.

Selections from Live from Orchestra Hall performances can also be enjoyed on the DSO’s YouTube channel.

Enjoy reading some of my favorite posts from our live Twitter audience:

• “Loving listening to #DSOLive! Hearing these brilliant musicians gives me every reason I need to desire to play professionally.”
• “Bravo to everyone who worked so hard to make this a reality! Looking forward to years of live DSO broadcasts!”
• “I wish [our orchestra] could reach out like this!”
• “Watching the streaming webcast of the @DetroitSymphony webcast. Our symphony > yours”
• “Beethoven 5 from Detroit is about to begin and I’m watching live on my iPhone. WOW!!”