An orchestra at this year's Adelaide Festival will create its odd brand of music from everyday items including soup pots, barrels, a fire extinguisher and drain pipes.
There are 500 performers in the Lost and Found Orchestra, an idea which originated in the UK and coming to entertain an Australian audience next month.
"It's a theatrical experience — it's more like Dr Seuss's orchestra, it's anything but a classical orchestra," creative director Luke Cresswell said.
"It's an eclectic mayhem of an orchestra — the idea was to find objects and sounds that you would use every day but you wouldn't think of as melodic and to make a symphony out of that."
The orchestra is holding final rehearsals in an old warehouse as it prepares to open the Adelaide Festival in Elder Park in the CBD in early March.
There are 100 UK orchestra members, who will join forces with hundreds of South Australian performers including school music students and some professional musicians, the creative director said.
"Some of them are just learning now, so they are walking up and down with hose pipes, or playing saws and it always sounds a bit weird when it starts and then it slowly comes together."
Hose pipe performer trained abroad
Local musician Chris Weber is leading the brass section, and even made a trip to the UK last year to perfect the art of playing a piece of hose pipe attached to a funnel.
"I generally play jazz or hip hop, commercial sorts of styles, usually on a professionally made brass instrument, so this has been very different," he said.
Mallory Steele is a trombonist who has been rehearsing on a somewhat different instrument for next month's performance.
"This is quite different. It's just a piece of pipe but so is a trombone, so I guess it all works," she said.
Mr Weber promised an energetic show from the orchestra for the festival audience.
"This is the first time they have done something this big with such community involvement," he said.
"It's going to be a chance for us to be on stage with 500 people having a great time and I am sure that energy will be felt in the crowd."
