The Tiny Orchestra: First And Only Performance

At 6.00 pm on the early evening of January 11 2012, an enthusiastic audience had gathered at the end of ‘The Street’ at Central St Martin’s new premises at King’s Cross in order to hear The Tiny Orchestra perform for the first – and last – time. In a short but meditative piece, those with ears to hear and eyes to see with were charmed by artificial dinosaur larynxes made from cardboard and rubber gloves, a soundproofed box containing a silent recording device, a wooden box containing nothing at all, alien metals and resonating junk of various kinds, a ‘latex wind’, an aerosol xylophone, a plastic ‘bubblophone’ and something called a ‘mu-o’, which appeared to be fashioned from a black plastic bin bag. Not since the divine abyss at Bayreuth cleared its throat for the first time have there been sounds like these. As we shall probably never experience their like again, any documentation of the event will be gratefully received and displayed on this blog. The photographs reproduced above come courtesy of Elsa Westreicher, to whom sincere thanks are due.