Saul Eisenberg's Junk Orchestra

Lady’s and gents, please peep into the quirky, weird and highly creative world of Saul Eisenberg’s Junk Orchestra. Better still, listen to it!
The Junk Orchestra brings together music storytelling, instrument building, recycling and environmental issues all at once.

From sliding plastic pipe trombones and scaffold xylophones to the haunting sounds of trampoline reverb tubes and gas tank tongue drums, all items have been rescued from the scrap yard to delight and intrigue with a unique and different composition every time. Best of all, The Junk Orchestra allows all participants to be unique and individual.

Saul and accompanying musicians can currently be heard (and seen) in the multimedia theatre production of ‘Trial Of The Mariner’, which runs until May 21st at Hoxton Hall in East London.
Music-News caught up with Saul during a rehearsal break to find out more about the man and his junk.

Music-News:
What prompted you to start a ‘Junk Orchestra’?

Saul Eisenberg:
I love sound. I’m a percussionist and I love creating new sounds. I’ve always built things, I’ve always been into making things and so the ‘Junk Orchestra’ brings together my passion for building things, actual percussion playing and new sounds. I love the fact that by picking things from an old scrap yard there are endless sounds to be found.

MN:
Why do percussions dominate in your orchestra? Because of your personal fondness for percussion?

SE:
Yes, I would say the ‘Junk Orchestra’ is a percussion-based orchestra. All the things I make have been selected for their sound or tone.

MN:
Before you started off with the orchestra, did you have a certain vision or a concept?

SE:
I decided I wanted to create a junk orchestra of instruments and it was all started because I wanted to develop a kid’s show, which I have now. I took this kid’s show around various schools or other places with young people and so workshops followed the show. And the workshops enabled everyone to come and form their own junk band. So every day with a different group of people is a different composition. The ‘Junk Orchestra’ is just the instruments and it becomes a band with whoever plays in it. It’s exciting because most people when they approach the ‘Junk Orchestra’ are approaching instruments and sounds they’ve never played or even heard before. They have to discover it for the first time. And they have to discover it together. So you start with a lot of rubbish and you end up with an awesome rubbish band! And you take the listener on a journey…
MN:
Is that how you would describe your orchestra then?

SE:
Yes. The ‘Junk Orchestra’ is a journey just from a load of rubbish to something we discover that sounds amazing. Everyone finishes feeling that they’ve gone on a journey into the twilight zone. There is an instrument to suit every character. If there is someone who is into rhythm and low bass, they can. If there is someone who just wants to screech and scrattle they can do that, too.

MN:
When you run your workshops, how do the themes and storylines come about?

SE:
It depends on the age group. When I’m working with a very young group of people, I like to link the sound into story. The developing and understanding of sound and its relationship to an emotion is related to characters or animals. These characters or animals are in turn something the kids can relate to. For example, I set up an emotion with young people which is haunting, spooky or scary, you can explore these sounds with young people and you can link them to a story they may know. As you get older, you can talk about arrangements and you can link these sounds together. You can have a movement of music which goes from scary to stomping or vice versa. So you can explore different movements of the music and everyone can keep in time or in rhythm.

MN:
So which groups are you more involved with in your workshops, kids or adults?

SE:
At the moment I have a kid’s show for key stage 1, which I call ‘Mr. Brown and his Clan Bang House’. So Mr. Brown’s world is a mess filled with a load of rubbish. He slowly discovers his world through sound until he has far too many sounds to play on his own. So kids discover the sounds through Mr. Brown’s journey and by the end of it, Mr. Brown can’t possibly play all these things on his own, so he needs help. And of course there are a lot of kids to help him.
Key stage 2 you can be more on a level with the kids. You can talk about science and talk about them actually building these things at home. You can get them into music through good old-fashioned beats and tapping their feet. You can bring elements of story in also, but at that age (7 – 11) kids are able to keep their beat. They are in control of their body, they are able to play boom on a drum if they think it in their head. So as the participants get older, you give more and more freedom over to the players.
Therefore if I’m working with adults, I tell them which sticks they need to use and maybe the journey of the music might go from soft and gentle to loud and fast. It might even go into the corporate world where groups of people have to come together and create something musical out of their normal understanding of how they exist together. So it exists on many levels.

MN:
So how about your involvement with this ‘Mariner’ theatre production?

SE:
It is about scoring the whole production and I’ve approached this theatre show by developing a road map. And the road map has moods and there will be different players in the ‘Junk Orchestra’ every night. So the musicians will improvise based on this road map and I will guide the musicians through the show. I want the actors as well involved in playing the sounds. I want the whole show to feel like a piece of music, like when you shut your eyes you can listen to it as a piece of music. I want the words to affect the music and the music to affect the words, which is quite an exciting way of approaching a show.

MN:
How did you get involved with the ‘Trial Of The Mariner’ show in the first place?

SE:
I met Roberto (Sanchez-Camus, the artistic director) because I did a small concert in aid of funding the first Folk Song Museum in England. So that’s where I met Roberto, during this lovely little soiree gathering various people that had access to funding to get behind this project. And then Roberto was talking about a project that he was doing called the ‘Trial Of The Mariner’. So I said I had a junk orchestra and he said, “Come and do a pitch for Hoxton Hall”. They did a rehearsal run the next day and wanted me to put music to it, so I went along and put music to about five or ten minutes of the show and we performed it in front of the panel in Hoxton Hall. The panel said ‘great’ and they wanted the show. So now we’re here!

MN:
So what’s after the Mariner show?

SE:
I don’t know to be honest. I’m just exploring where the Junk Orchestra can go. There’s another kid’s show I might collaborate on, which is called ‘Isabel’s Tree’ but that’s very new and in its infancy. It’s meant to be performed in Chelsea over the summer. So we’ll see what happens.

MN:
Many thanks for this truly enlightening interview, Saul. Next time I recycle my rubbish I know who might want it.

(www.thejunkorchestra.co.uk)