American jazz singer Melody Gardot is recruiting a “digital global orchestra” from her home in Paris, to help her complete her new track.
The Grammy nominee, 35, said she hoped the project would “send a smile out into the world” and inspire people to “think positively” during the coronavirus pandemic.
Anyone can sign up online and they will receive musical charts, backing tracks and instructions detailing how to record themselves performing at home.
The final track, titled From Paris With Love, will feature on her forthcoming album, and everyone who appears on it will be paid standard union rates.
She told the PA news agency: “We have to think positively. We have had two months now, at least in France, to be shocked, scared, confused, alarmed, concerned, mortified, sometimes plunged into the darkness of sadness and tragedy because of losing loved ones.
“And I think we have spent a lot of time sitting still. And now with that time, we have the opportunity to allow our vision of what the future should be to come through.
“Whether it is a comfort or a service or a way of moving forward in the arts, it must be this change where we use the energy that we have, not to remain focussed on sadness and this feeling of being distraught, but the way forward.”
Gardot is also asking fans to send in portraits of themselves holding handwritten postcard signs, sending love from wherever they are.
She said: “It’s gorgeous because you get to send a smile out into the world. It’s made with love, from the beginning to the end.”
Gardot, originally from New Jersey in the US, said: “I come from scrappy roots. I don’t come from a house bourgeois or privilege.
“I remember the hunger that I had to get out of my situation, just because I couldn’t stand it any more.
“And I was always looking for opportunities to do more and help people along the way. I like to bring the people that were with me up the step on the ladder.”
Submissions will be judged by Gardot and her team of producers, composers and engineers.
She and her record label, Decca, are waiving their profits from the track, with money going to French healthcare charity Protege Ton Soignant.
Musicians can sign up at melodygardot.com. The deadline for submissions is 11.59pm on May 18.