People playing instruments made from vegetables on a stage
The Vegetable Orchestra performing in Madrid in 2013 Dominique Faget / AFP via Getty Images
In 1998, a group of friends was making soup together when inspiration struck: They wondered if they could transform their vegetables into musical instruments.
The idea started as a joke. But since they were signed up to perform at an upcoming festival anyway, they decided to test out their idea. That’s when the Vegetable Orchestra was born.
Now, some 25 years later, the Vegetable Orchestra has played more than 340 concerts using fresh carrots, pumpkins, leeks, parsnips, radishes and other veggies. The group has now set a world record for most concerts by a vegetable orchestra—one that’s likely to stand for years to come. According to Guinness World Records, the members are the “uncontested” record holders in this category.
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The Vegetable Orchestra is based in Vienna, Austria, but performs all over the world. It’s played at many prestigious venues, including the Royal Festival Hall in London and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
The group dabbles in a variety of musical genres—from free jazz to experimental electronic. But everything it plays falls under the umbrella of “Gemüsik,” a mixture of the German words for “vegetable” and “music,” as Gastro Obscura’s Kaja Seruga reported last year.
“There are no musical boundaries for the Vegetable Orchestra,” according to the group’s website. “The musical scope of the ensemble expands consistently, and recently developed vegetable instruments and their inherent sounds often determine the direction.”
Because fresh veggies only last a few hours after being cut and handled, the musicians have to make new instruments for each show. They scour local markets for produce that looks and sounds interesting. They then use drills, knives and other kitchen tools to transform the veggies into flutes, marimbas, clarinets, violins and more.
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Each musician makes between eight and 25 instruments for each show, as BBC News’ Eliot Stein reported in 2019. Some instruments are made of several different types of vegetables—such as a saxophone-like “cucumberphone” made from a carrot, a cucumber and a bell pepper. The group uses special microphones to amplify their vegetable tunes.
“Some prefer building melodic instruments based on classical instruments, like the carrot flute or the pumpkin drum,” Matthias Meinharter, one of the orchestra’s founding members, told Gastro Obscura. “The other fraction are the purists, and I would count myself among them, who want to highlight the vegetable sounds, when something sounds weird.”
The pieces of veggies left over from preparing the instruments get cooked into soup. At the end of each concert, the band members serve the soup to the audience.
Their improvisational performances have inspired other groups around the world, including the London Vegetable Orchestra and Long Island Vegetable Orchestra. The group has also recorded and released four albums: The latest, called the “Green Album,” came out in 2018.
“Many people think we’re kind of cabaret or just a funny performance,” orchestra member Susanna Gartmayer told BBC News. “But they’re surprised to understand that there’s actually a lot of sonic potential in vegetables, and that we want to make really interesting music.”