Portsmouth Sinfonia

We were listening to Brian Eno's Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) today. BEAUTIFUL BEAUTIFUL INFINITELY AMAZING ALBUM.

Did you know Eno was also a part of this? He played clarinet...

The Portsmouth Sinfonia was a real orchestra founded by a group of students at Portsmouth School of Art in Portsmouth, England, in 1970—however, the Sinfonia had an unusual entrance requirement. Players had to be either non-musicians, or if a musician, play an instrument that was entirely new to them. Among the founding members was one of their teachers, English composer Gavin Bryars. The orchestra started as a one-off, tongue-in-cheek performance art ensemble but became a cultural phenomenon over the following ten years, with concerts, record albums, a film and a hit single. The impact of the Portsmouth Sinfonia was considerable and their name and reputation has endured even though they last performed publicly in 1979.

The early repertoire of the Sinfonia was drawn from standard classical repertoire ("The Blue Danube" waltz, "Also Sprach Zarathustra", etc), so that most orchestra members had a rough idea of what the piece, or at least famous parts of it, should sound like; even if they could not play their chosen instrument accurately, they would at least have an idea that they should be going higher at one part then lower at another, and so on. The end result was the musical ensemble producing not only the correct note but several notes nearby, 'clouds of sound' that gave an average impression of the piece.



via wiki