Do you play an instrument? Maybe the carrot? The cucumber? The pepper? The celeriac? Leek? Or parsley? What sounds like a vegetarian shopping list are, for some people, indeed tools to make music. How can music be fresher and healthier than that?

 

The Vienna Vegetable Orchestra was founded in 1998 and consists of twelve members who use different vegetables to produce a quite experimental kind of music that fuses a variety of music styles such as contemporary music, beat-oriented house, jazz, noise, dub, and clicks’n’cuts.

All instruments are self-made of fresh vegetables and dried plant material. Very popular veggies are carrots, peppers, cucumbers, dried pumpkins, leek, artichokes, celeriac, and onionskin. This results in instruments like: pumpkin drum, celery guitar, cucumber phone, carrot recorder, eggplant clap, celeriac bongo, leek violin, radish bass flute, leek zucchini vibrator, pumpkin triangle, and carrot marimba. In order to build the instruments the musicians use drilling machines, sharp knives, and other kitchen tools. How long it takes to prepare a vegetable instrument depends very much on the instrument. For example, a tomato takes no time at all, and other instruments like a cucumber phone or carrot recorder take between ten to thirty minutes.

The members of the Vegetable Orchestra don’t see their music as a fun project but take it serious and they give concerts all over the world. This can make it sometimes difficult to get the right vegetables. Since vegetables go off soon the musicians have to build their instruments immediately before a concert. Further, they cannot carry the vegetables with them on the plane. Therefore, they need to buy all the vegetables in the country where they appear on stage. One problem is that the quality of the vegetables differs from country to country. For example, in order to build a carrot recorder it is necessary that the carrot has a certain size. Since the instruments do only last for one concert, the Vegetable Orchestra gives some parts of the vegetables in a soup and distributes it to the audience after the concert.

The members see themselves as “Gemüsiker” and “Gemüsikerinnen”, which is a blend of the German words Gemüse (vegetables) and Musiker (m) / Musikerinnen (f) (musicians). So, that you can talk of “vegeticians” in English.

Until now the orchestra has released three albums. The latest one is called “Onionoise”. If you want to know how the instruments are built and how they sound watch the clip below. Enjoy.

 

 

If you live in Russia, France or Hong Kong you have the chance to attend a concert this year. The dates are:

 

30.11.2011 International House of Music, Moscow (Russia)

13.12.2011 Reims (France)

30.12.2011 Ngau Chi Wan Civic Center/Theatre, Hong Kong

31.12.2011 Tai Po Civic Center/Theatre, Hong Kong

1.1.2012 Yuen Long Theatre, Hong Kong

 

Vocabulary:

die Karotte – carrot

der Kürbis – pumpkin

die Gurke – cucumber

das Radieschen – radish

die Paprika – pepper

der Lauch – leek

die Sellerieknolle – celeriac

die Selleriestange – celery

die Aubergine – eggplant

die Zwiebel – onion

der Knoblauch – garlic

der Blumenkohl – cauliflower

die Zucchini – zucchini

der Brokkoli – broccoli

die Tomate – tomato

der Kopfsalat – lettuce

der Eisbergsalat – ice lettuce

der Feldsalat / die Rapunzel – lamb’s lettuce

die Petersilie – parsley

der Schnittlauch – chives

der Dill – dill

das Basilikum – basil

die Frühlingszwiebel – spring onion