The Thai Elephant Orchestra is a musical ensemble consisting of as many as sixteen elephants near Lampang in Northern Thailand. The elephants play music (essentially as conducted improvisations) on enormous specially designed musical instruments. The orchestra was created and is conducted by elephant conservationist Richard Lair of the Thai Elephant Conservation Center and the American composer/performer Dave Soldier. They have three CDs released on the Mulatta Records label with an orchestra ranging in size from 6 in the initial CD (2001) to fourteen elephants in the last, Water Music (2011).
Famous quotes containing the words elephant and/or orchestra:
“I asked my mother for fifty cents
To see the elephant jump the fence.
He jumped so high he reached the sky,
And didn’t get back till the Fourth of July.”
—Unknown. I Asked My Mother (l. 1–4)
“As the artist
extends his world with
one gratuitous flourish—a stroke of white or
a run on the clarinet above the
bass tones of the orchestra ...”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)