Many impressive instruments have filled London’s famed Abbey Road Studios with sound over the decades, like David Gilmour’s Fender Stratocaster and Paul McCartney’s Hofner bass. But one group’s music makers may be among the most innovative — and certainly the quirkiest.
The London Vegetable Orchestra uses hand-crafted vegetables as its instruments, and recently recorded a new track there featuring popular items straight out of the produce aisle.
Jalapenos and avocado pits became the brass section, an onion transformed into a bass, corn cobs served as woodwinds, and lettuce was used as percussion. The resulting song, “From Ground to Sound,” really calls into question your mom’s directive not to play with your food.
The project was a collaboration between the orchestra and Chipotle, and it only employed ingredients found in the chain’s restaurants. It took three months of experimentation and dozens of different versions to turn the vegetables into musical instruments, and their natural variability and short window for freshness were integrated into the creative process.
“No two vegetables ever behave exactly the same way,” orchestra member Patrick Johns said in a news release. “You can carve two identical instruments, but they can respond very differently. Part of the craft is learning not to force an ingredient to sound a certain way but to find the sound that’s already there and build the music around it.”
The London Vegetable Orchestra bills itself as “the U.K.’s only ensemble offering audiences ‘Home Grown’ entertainment.” The group formed in 2010 while its members — who are all professional musicians — were studying at the Royal Academy of Music.
“From Ground to Sound” was composed by Beacon Street Studio with help from advertising agency KIDS and was “inspired by the energy of vegetables growing from seeds into nourishment,” per the release.
“The role of creativity is to help people experience familiar things in unfamiliar ways,” said Icaro Doria, founder and chief creative officer at KIDS. “Millions of people know Chipotle’s ingredients by how they look, taste, and smell. Very few have ever stopped to ask what they sound like. That question led us somewhere no one expected.”
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