The First Vienna Vegetable Orchestra (called Das erste Wiener Gemüseorchester in their native German) is an Austrian group that makes the instruments they use out of fresh vegetables. Since their founding in 1998, the group of musicians, visual artists, writers, sound poets, and other artists puts on 20 to 30 concerts a year. They even hold the record for the most concerts by a vegetable orchestra.
The group makes fresh instruments for each performance, spending about three hours building their instruments with kitchen utensils and powertools. The musicians buy their vegetables from farmer’s markets wherever they visit to make sure they always have the highest quality available—according to an FAQ on their website, instruments will not work right or even break if they’re not fresh enough.
Using vegetables requires an extended soundcheck to make sure that the instruments are loud enough to be used. At the end of every show, the audience gets a taste of the music in the form of soup made from whatever’s leftover from the instruments.
via Mental Floss
