(WSVN) - You know that saying “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure”? Well, it’s true! For one composer, all trash is precious, and this Friday, he’s using junk to bring the funk when Miami’s New World Symphony presents his piece: “Junkestra.”
“Robots” movie clip: “Well, there goes our happy ending … No, it’s a fusion of jazz and funk. It’s called ‘junk!'”
And that’s exactly what “Junkestra” is! Well, sort of.
It’s a musical band made entirely from junk picked up from the San Francisco dump.
Nathaniel Stookey, “Junkestra” composer: “It never occurred to me in my wildest dreams that that garbage would end up into flight cases and shipped all over the place.”
The piece comes from the mind of Nathaniel Stookey after he discovered an artist in residence program at his local landfill.
Nathaniel Stookey: “They gave me this shopping cart to collect garbage with, and I just went around the floor and started picking things up and tapping them basically to see what kind of sound they made.”
He picked up things like bottles, pipes, pieces of a deck railings and a rusty old saw… just to name a few.
Playing instruments made of trash isn’t as easy at it looks…
Joe DeSotelle: “I’m playing a set of chimes. It’s hard to do… you know. You don’t have a lot of control usually. You use both your hands… and, you know, be very particular, but not with this. You gotta do what comes with it.”
But though it might not be easy, it’s no less impressive.
Jenny Marasti: “It’s been like a really cool experience to go into these trunks, take it out, and it’s like ‘Oh, this looks like trash but actually sounds really good!'”
Audiences will get their chance to hear these unusual sounds at the New World Symphony tomorrow night and the Dean of Instrumental Performance said this is a show people won’t want to miss.
Michael Linville: “There are elements in this piece that are extremely gratifying for the audience to be able to see musicians playing on these crazy items that you would not think could actually make beautiful sounds but then they do.”
For tickets, click here.
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