The Vegetable Orchestra is an Austrian orchestra that plays music on instruments made entirely from fresh vegetables. Founded in February 1998, the orchestra consists of ten musicians. Veggie instruments quickly go bad, so the orchestra has to create new ones each time it plays; they have invented more than 150 instruments over the years. Whatever the musicians don’t use gets boiled into a soup that’s served to the audience after the show! The group has three albums to their credit and is listed in the Guinness World Records for ‘Most concerts by a vegetable orchestra’.
“A pumpkin works very well on its own as a bass drum, and you can make all sorts of instruments—like flutes, recorders and xylophones—from carrots,” Jörg Piringer, a musician from the Vegetable Orchestra told City Lab.
“Rub two leeks together like they were a violin and a bow, and you get a sort of squeak that can be really very loud. Onion skins rubbed together also make a nice maraca-like rustle.”
They’re also constantly striving to create new instruments and mess around with new ideas. And with materials as malleable and modular as vegetables, it would seem that the possibilities are endless.
The whole concept may seem a little crazy, but the musicians take their art dead seriously, taking cues from fellow forward thinking artists like Aphex Twin and John Cage. As City Lab note, over the past 18 years, they have played audiences across the world, performing at gallery openings, exhibitions, community events, and their own headline shows.
Picture Credit : Google
