Four Unusual Orchestras Video and Their Unusual Instruments

When you imagine an orchestra, you probably picture musicians dressed in elegant attire gathered on a stage in an iconic concert hall playing classical music on violins, flutes and harps. That makes total sense. But, today, people are having lots of fun with the concept of what an orchestra can be, forming ensembles that play instruments like typewriters and vegetables. And some perform in unusual spaces. Like tiny Brooklyn apartments

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orchestra's come in all shapes and sizes if you're open to playing around there's no limit to how we're or what kind of music you make so sit back and tune into these ensembles that are anything but typical my name is Alex Holman and I play tenor smith-corona with the Boston typewriter orchestra the Boston Piper to Orchestra is an ensemble for typewriter invoice some of us have musical backgrounds some of us don't several of our members play in bands currently I haven't touched much of anything except for typewriters since playing the trombone in high school we play a wide variety of typewriters from some small portable models all the way up to some relatively large desk models a lot of what we do in building up songs is really exploring what different sounds we can get out of the typewriter and how we can incorporate them into a song for example you have the the key makes it of a a basic clack sound but then you have the the shift that moves a lot of mechanics and make somewhat of a bass sound then you also have the the roller that gets a good sort of a mechanical ratchet sound to it and then only we can work with the carriage return for like this you know the standard sweep you sound to it as our name suggests the Boston typewriter orchestra is Boston based but we've actually played all over New England most of the typewriters are 50 60 70 years old usually in our hands we see two to three years of lifespan we feed on them pretty hard when we started out in 2004 we were we're a bunch of guys getting together and banging on typewriters we get that we're kind of weird it's a little bit of a wacky idea but we've discovered that this makes some legitimate music and you know it can be a real serious endeavor we have true songs that come together and people seem to really enjoy them and as long as we still are entertaining people we're gonna stay out there typing [Music] very often people think it's gonna be funny and then they realize it's not really we really do music it's not impossible to make music with vegetables my name is Susanna got my ax and then I'm a member of the vegetable orchestra the orchestra exists since 18 years now if first instrument was the tomato because you can do sound with tomatoes but it will be messy for sure we go shopping on the market first we choose all the vegetables there we have three kinds of instruments one is the ready mate you can just buy it at the market and play it it's like the pepper it's cold snow it's ready already and then there are the simple instruments like with one cut or some cuts to get it like that then with the more complex instruments we have some that work like normal instruments you know the pumpkin is the bass drum and the sound of the pumpkin is really important after shopping we go to the venue and start to build instruments all in all it takes two to three hours to build all the instruments for everybody and then we start with the soundcheck and since we have new instruments each time we have to have a very long sound [Music] [Applause] we have a lot of different musical influences in the orchestra since they're really many people everybody's interested in different things we make soup during the building process of the vegetable instruments with the remaining vegetables when we serve it to the audience after the concert and it's also after hearing and seeing us and smelling the vegetables which will be intense in there because it's so small this theater and then you can also eat it you never get it out of your head anymore if you're in the orchestra to look vegetables in another way walking down this quiet street in Brooklyn you'd never know that inside this building would in this tiny apartment music is made meet Evan and Luke there are longtime friends and roommates Evan and I have been living together here for how many years I believe the other man and a half and once a month in only about five hundred square feet they managed to pile in up to sixty musicians for the ultimate recording session bridge arrangement we record it in about three hours and post it online a lot of people's reactions are that it seems crazy and it is crazy to pull this off first they have to uproot their humble abode anything that is not involved in making music has to go we take all the furniture out okay take most of the doors off it's just all about making as much room as much sightlines as possible it really just looks like chaos there's mic stands everywhere the floor is littered with music stances I'm a little worried about this though there's not a single inch to spare and that's because they make way for the strings woodwinds horns percussion and a full choir yeah that's a marimba in the kitchen why I wanted an opportunity to record a bunch of people at the same time Luke on an opportunity to hear his Arrangements played and so we just invited a bunch of people over and although it seems unconventional there's a reason for the madness we're trying to change the way that you might see an orchestra play there is a special dynamic and a feeling in the room that you won't get in a recording studio or in a public venue it's this unique sound and sense of community that it's attractive musicians from all over the country to participate there's definitely something really exciting about the idea that this shouldn't really be possible it's a really unique experience and I think that people are drawn to that and so they keep at it [Music] it's a real kind of jarring wonderful experience every time and we love it and I bet the neighbors must love it too they're lucky they're good [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] a nice instrument has the purity and the clarity of the heavenly realm it's not of the earth in the way that a wooden instrument would be there's so much potential in ice as an acoustic material [Music] my name is Tim Lynn Hart and I am the founder of ice music ice music is the music that we make on this Orchestra of ice instruments the idea first came to me about 21 years ago I was an ice sculptor for many years she decided one of my sculptures I'd like to build a giant violin and I had a friend who was building guitars and he just asked the question gee I wonder how that one's gonna sound and that question has swallowed much of the rest of my life the instruments are made of white ice which is a mixture of snow and water it's filled with as snowflakes and air bubbles and they're all kind of different things going on to make a single instrument of violin or viola here the ice part takes about five or six days I can probably build the whole Orchestra here in about seven or eight weeks we have violins violas cellos bass guitars mandolins banjos drums and xylophone Oh [Music] ice music is not just classical music or experimental music it's a wide variety of different things this winter we'll put on about 45 concerts the concert hall has a specific design it's one giant ice cave the igloo right now is ten degrees Fahrenheit it's definitely an issue in ice music that people's fingers get cold people play with a variety of different kinds of gloves some people play barehanded but for me the temperature is you know the thing that I really need to make ice music work so many people just cannot wrap their brain around a piece of ice making a sound or a beautiful sound when they come into the ice concert hall and they're just very very pleasantly surprised and that releases a real kind of a high for people and then wow it's it's amazing [Music]