Klarinet Archive - Posting 000500.txt from 2002/04

From: Neil Leupold <leupold_1@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] What will they think of next???
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2002 15:58:52 -0400

LOL!! Oh sh*&! I've got tears in my eyes, I'm laughing so hard
as I listen to the ausio samples! This has to be some of the fun-
nest stuff I've ever heard, knowing that it's being done with veg-
etables. And they clearly take themselves very seriously, given
the organization and formality of the web site. Just the name
itself cracks me up: The First Vienna Vegetable Orchestra. The
Radetzky March on carrots and cucumbers. LOL!!

~ Neil :-)

--- Daniel Leeson <leeson0@-----.net> wrote:
> The following news items comes from The Age in Melbourne, Australia and
> was published on Apr. 17, 2001. The author is one Peter Finn who wrote
> the story from Vienna.
>
> A technical question: does a carved out carrot overblow an octave or a
> twelfth?
>
> Dan Leeson
> =================================================
>
> The ensemble has nine musicians, all in black, and a cook, wearing a
> white chef's hat, and, after a one-hour performance, they do what
> musicians with a cook do. They eat their instruments.
>
> The First Vienna Vegetable Orchestra blows carved-out carrots, taps
> turnips, claps with eggplant cymbals, twangs on rhubarb fibres, and
> rustles parsley and greens to create an experimental sound that
> eventually winds up, literally, in the audience's stomach.
>
> For, as the concert progresses, the musicians toss their instruments
> into
> a large pot that the cook stirs - rhythmically, of course. (Anything
> with
> too much residual saliva is discarded.) After a finale that involves
> loud
> pureeing with an electric mixer which necessarily precludes any encore,
> listeners eat the fare resulting from this smorgasbord of sound.
>
> Tasty, too - but don't laugh. This is serious soup.
>
> The orchestra is part of the Department for Vegetable Sound (not a joke,
> they insist) at the Institute for Trans-Acoustic Research in Vienna, a
> private venture that studies sound. The music is, according to publicity
> notes, "a relished escape from the conventional way of viewing
> vegetables
> exclusively as a means of satisfying the urge to eat".
>
> Anywhere else this would be a gag. In Vienna, it's an aesthetic. They
> are
> artists intent on the idiosyncratic cultivation of a new music form.
> They
> play some compositions by Franz Hautzinger, a teacher at the Vienna
> University of Music. But they also cover some classical and jazz works.
>
> "We all take our work very seriously," said Nikolaus Gansterer, 27, who
> plays the leeks, among other instruments. "It would be optimal if we
> elicited enough suspense through the absurdity of playing vegetables for
> the audience to have to reflect and listen attentively."
>
> That loosely translates as - the audience cracks up when they should be
> reverential, and Mr Gansterer and colleagues don't like it.
>
> "It bothered me that people laughed so much," said Joerg Piringer, 27,
> after a recent concert at Vienna's University for Business and
> Economics.
>
> The ensemble was formed three years ago when Mr Piringer cooked up the
> idea of a one-time gig with vegetables. But the idea sprouted and the
> orchestra now has requests for concerts across Europe.
>
> With a Germanic flair for organisation, the orchestra has divided its
> artistic creations into four phases of a "macrophonic symphony".
>
> Phase 1: Go shopping.
>
> The musicians find their instruments at the Naschmarkt, Vienna's
> best-known market, spending about $A70 a concert. Although they use
> pumpkins for percussion, they find them expensive. They routinely try
> out
> new instruments - recently a carrot recorder and a cucumber didgeridoo.
> This being Europe, the orchestra refuses to use genetically modified
> vegetables.
>
> Phase 2: Each musician makes his or her own instruments.
>
> The cucumber-o-phone, for instance, is made from a carrot mouthpiece, a
> hollowed cucumber and a bell pepper to amplify sound.
>
> Phase 3: They perform.
>
> This is a combination of playing and cooking, with the cook's dicing of
> onions mixed in. Sensitive microphones pick up even the softest tones,
> such as the brushing of salad leaves. It's melodic, then rhythmic, then
> dissonant - occasionally familiar. (A sample can be heard at
> www.iftaf.org.
>
> Gradually, the smell of the coming feast wafts across the audience.
>
> Phase 4: Enjoy the food.
>
> "We have had good feedback," said Mr Gansterer. Indeed, as the
> Sueddeutsche newspaper in Munich noted, the "music keeps sounding
> fresh".
>
>
> Their website:
> http://www.gemueseorchester.org/start_e.htm
>
> --
> ***************************
> ** Dan Leeson **
> ** leeson0@-----.net **
> ***************************
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>

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