Who says you can't play with food?: The Vegetable Orchestra at TEDxVienna

The Vegetable Orchestra performs with instruments made from fresh vegetables, which must be built anew for each concert and each rehearsal. The use of various vegetable instruments which are constantly being refined creates a musically and aesthetically unique universe of sound, which cannot be achieved with traditional instruments.
The Vegetable Orchestra was founded in Vienna in the year 1998 and has played more than 200 concerts at very different venues (concert halls, greenhouses, mountain huts, clubs, ships, and festivals for classical, electronic, improvised and world music).
In artistic, aesthetic and infrastructural decisions of importance all twelve members of the ensemble have their equal vote. The collective is a mix of people with different artistic backgrounds. Musicians, visual artists, architects, designers, media artists, writers and sound-poets all come together here.
The continued exploration and refinement of performable vegetable music is the central objective, the focus of the orchestra's innovative quest. Each individual (and their particular creative approach) is of vital importance in sustaining the fundamental artistic objective of the Vegetable Orchestra -- the artistic autonomy of this unique ensemble.
There are no musical boundaries for the Vegetable Orchestra. The most diverse music styles fuse here -- contemporary music, beat-oriented House tracks, experimental Electronic, Free Jazz, Noise, Dub, Clicks'n'Cuts - the musical scope of the project expands never-endingly, and recently-developed vegetable instruments and their inherent sounds often determine the stylistic direction.
A concert of The Vegetable Orchestra appeals to all the senses. Vegetable-visuals and live video projections provide fascinating images and after a short time a wonderful smell of vegetables is in the air. As an encore, at the end of the concert and video performance, the audience is offered fresh vegetable soup.




In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)