ViVA Girls' Member and Guzhen player Su Chang is a Winner for the "Soloist Category" in the YouTube Symphony Orchestra 2011 Competition

Simultaneously, The ViVA Girls Have Signed with Grammy-Winning label Domo Music Group and are Currently Preparing their full-length Debut CD Release Summer 2011

Los Angeles, CA (January 24, 2011) - ViVA Girls' (www.youtube.com/thevivagirls) "Guzhen" artist Su Chang is a winner in the soloist category for the YouTube Symphony Orchestra 2011 competition.  She will be performing as a soloist live at the Sydney Opera Hall in March 2011 with the rest of the Symphony winners.

Visit here and click on Su Chang's video:
http://googland.blogspot.com/2011/01/g-meet-youtube-symphony-orchestra-2011.html

Simultaneously, it was announced that the Viva Girls have signed with the Grammy winning label Domo Music Group and are preparing their debut release for summer of 2011.

The Viva Girls are China's instrumental supergroup set to take the world by storm with their innovative mix of modern and classical Chinese elements.  The Viva Girls are one of the few -- if the not the first -- instrumental girl group from China to have signed an international recording deal.

The majority of Viva Girls members are graduates of China's Central Conservatory of Music, the most prestigious in China.  Its equivalent would be the Julliard School of performing arts in New York.

Su Chang plays "the Guzhen" -- an instrument most of the world outside of China has never seen or heard before.  Most recently, Su Chang performed with Kitaro for a special charity function at the San Francisco Asian Art Museum.

Su Chang noted, "Through the Viva Girls experience which includes focusing on performing outside of her classical training, I feel my skills matured enough to handle an international competition such as the YouTube Symphony."

See the Viva Girls and Su Chang's profile and videos at www.youtube.com/suchangguzhen and www.youtube.com/thevivagirls.

These final 101 outstanding musicians - who range in age from 14 to 49, and hail from five different continents - have emerged from the 336 finalists selected last month by partner orchestras worldwide (including London Symphony Orchestra, Berliner Philharmoniker and Sydney Symphony).  Online votes on those finalists then helped artistic advisor Michael Tilson Thomas and composer Mason Bates settle on the final line-up.

Among the final group is a vuvuzela-fixated trombonist from Germany, an Arizona-based clarinetist who has never left the U.S., and Su Chang -- a Guzheng player from China whose instrument is one a lot of the world has never seen, or heard before.  They'll come together from March 14 to prepare for a final performance on Sunday, March 20, which will be streamed live to the world on YouTube.

In an effort to open up every stage of the orchestra process, the contest organizers called for auditions from around the world on YouTube and we were blown away by the amazing videos we received in response.  The YouTube community voted on their favorites and visited the channel in their millions.  Now organizers are inviting fans to join the winning musicians as they begin their creative journey to Sydney.  Organizers will post their videos and behind-the-scenes footage of the orchestra, from rehearsal and master classes to performance, to the YouTube Symphony channel, and to mobile apps (which can be download on the Android Market or Apple App Store and in March the entire process will start broadcasting from Sydney.