Open Call: Join the vegetable orchestra

What does a celery bongo, a leek violin or a carrot flute sound like?

Find out and make your own instrument from your favourite vegetables!

HELLERAU – European Centre for the Arts is looking for children from the 3rd grade upwards who would like to make a carrot flute, a leek violin, a celery bongo or any other vegetable instrument for a plant-sound laboratory. With the self-made instrument the children can record and upload their own vegetable sound.

All vegetable sounds sent in until 20.06.2020 will become part of a large vegetable orchestra video collage, which will be presented online and as a concert in HELLERAU – European Centre of Arts on 04.07. As a thank-you for the personal vegetable sounds submitted, each participating child will receive a little surprise from the Hygiene Museum and will become part of the big children’s vegetable orchestra concert.

On the website www.pflanzen-klang-labor.de Ulrike Gärtner and Albrecht Scharnweber will show you by means of video instructions exactly how to build different instruments from carrots, leeks and celery in order to produce sounds.
A video also shows how you can become part of a large vegetable orchestra concert. The children should be filmed in landscape format while playing music with their edible instrument. The video must then be uploaded on the website by 20.06.2020 with the consent of the parents. A basic rhythm will then be created from all submitted videos, to which one can improvise super.

The project was initiated by the sound and audio expert Ulrike Gärtner and the musician and music educator Albrecht Scharnweber. Together with the participating children, they will explore the various types of vegetables for their suitability as instruments.