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News December 21, 2017

Amazon has its own 80-piece orchestra

Amazon has its own 80-piece orchestra

We’ve heard of company baseball and music trivia teams, but Amazon takes the cake with its own 80-piece Symphony Orchestra.

Beau Curran, a technical account manager on Amazon’s digital music operations team is an oboist in the Amazon Symphony Orchestra in Seattle.

Speaking to Yahoo, he said: “About this time last year, one of our oboists looked through our employee directory and looked through people’s interests, particularly in classical musical instruments, and he just sent out this massive email, asking ‘Hey, who wants to start an orchestra?’”

200 employees expressed interest and 80 instrumentalists now rehearse each week at the Seattle headquarters. They perform twice a year for summer and winter concerts, which they ticket for free through Eventbrite.

“Escape from the chaos of a downtown Seattle evening with timeless selections from Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Bach, all brought to you by our talented crew of Amazonian musicians,” reads the Eventbrite listing for their first concert in July.

The Orchestra’s concert earlier month raised over $18,000 in donations for Mary’s Place, a nonprofit shelter for homeless families at Amazon’s Seattle headquarters.

Amazon Australia officially opened for business this month. The online retail monolith quietly launched its platform Down Under on December 5 and began taking orders from its 24,000-square-meter fulfilment centre in Melbourne’s Dandenong South, with the promise of “millions” of products, big discounts and on-day delivery (depending, of course, on where you live).

While Amazon has been busy hiring for its music offering since before June, filling the roles of Music Curator, Senior Music Curator, Senior Marketing Manager, and Head of Digital Music, Amazon Music Unlimited won’t launch until early 2018.

:: Amazon Australia launches: The music industry reacts

This article originally appeared on The Industry Observer, which is now part of The Music Network.

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