Klarinet Archive - Posting 000512.txt from 2002/04

From: "Gene Nibbelin" <gnibbelin@-----.com>
Subj: RE: [kl] What will they think of next???
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2002 21:28:21 -0400

Dan -

Comment: There are some people in Vienna who have W A A A A AY too much
time on their hands.

Question: If they cooked their instruments in a wok would their previously
performed "music" have an Oriental flavor?

Comment: I'm not sure that many of us would be too happy with "SPIT
SOUP" -even if it was boiled for an hour.

I'd still prefer a DELUXE PIZZA!!! (and a big icy mug of beer)

(This is what happens to your mind when you spend too much time working on
Kroepsch Studies.)

Gene Nibbelin

-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel Leeson [mailto:leeson0@-----.net]
Subject: [kl] What will they think of next???

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

--
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** Dan Leeson **
** leeson0@-----.net **
***************************

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