The Long Island Vegetable Orchestra was created more than a decade ago by Dale Stuckenbruck, a musician from Germany who teaches music on Long Island.
Over the years, it has performed at schools, galleries, libraries and at an environmental conference in Geneva. It even appeared in a film.
Because vegetable instruments don’t last, fresh ones have to be made every time they play, and they spend an hour before rehearsals carefully drilling into carrots and hollowing out squashes with an ice-cream scoop.
Their origin came after he had been asked to create a music program for students who were not musically inclined, he said. After failing to capture their interest with drumming and music theory, he stumbled across the Viennese Vegetable Orchestra on YouTube.
Making playable vegetable instruments turned out not to be easy, but once he got the hang of it, the concept caught on. Carrots could be wind instruments — flutes, panpipes and clarinets, or, as Stuckenbruck called them, carronets. (The reed is often made from a slice of sweet potato.)
Those concerned about waste need not worry, Dale Struckenbruck explained that after they are done with each performance, the band composts the healthy instruments and feed them to their rabbits.
source: seattletimes.com
