Linsey Pollak - The Carrot Musician

Here's a guy who can do incredible things with a simple carrot. When Linsey hits the stage expect the unexpected!

What does he do?? he plays carrots - Yes!! combining comedy with music making, and generally giving people a good time.

He is a home-styled kitchenhand with a difference. He’s eccentric, hilarious and totally irresistable. And he lives in a musical world where all is possible....   From the moment that he walks into the kitchen, everything becomes musical. He even transforms a carrot into a clarinet before our very eyes.  Using digital technology to record sounds instantaneously the audience is able to see each piece being constructed layer by layer, with all the sounds coming from the cooking utensils and food.

This musical world that Linsey creates is more than a series of clever tricks. It is an aural world of depth, energy and beauty. Although the materials are disconcertingly simple, the music itself is complex, rich and emotive, ranging from energetic and percussive cross rhythms to haunting and lyrical woodwind (or should we say vegiewind) melodies.

Linsey Pollak is an artist with a reputation for not only creating, but also playing instruments made out of everything from carrots, watering cans, chairs, bins and brooms to rubber gloves.  For over 30 years, he has toured in Australia, Asia, the Americas and Europe.  Linsey is well known all around Australia as a musician, instrument maker, composer, musical director and community music facilitator.

He has worked as a musical instrument maker for over 20 years and has designed a number of new wind instruments as well as specialising in woodwind instruments from Eastern Europe (having studied Macedonian bagpipes in Macedonia). He has specialised in designing and making marimbas and other tuned percussion. His ongoing obsession combines much of this: Making music more accessible to the Community through musical instrument making and playing workshops.

Linsey has a reputation for making and playing instruments made from rubber gloves, carrots, watering cans, chairs, brooms, bins, and other found objects. First developed in his solo show “Bang it with a Fork” and further in the acclaimed children’s show “Out of the Frying Pan”, this line of musical inventiveness has ultimately led him to also encompass modern digital technology and develop his solo shows “Knocking on Kevin’s Door” , “Playpen”, “The Art of Food” and "Making Jam" and the larger scale outdoor environmental performance “Bim...BamBoo!!” More recently he is using a midi wind controller to play and loop samples of everything from voices to frogs. He is currently building a musical installation where the sound of frogs are triggered when large aluminium frogs are hit with a stream of water “SQUIRT”.

Linsey Pollak is one of Australia's most brilliant and under-rated composer/musicians. He is wildly innovative in the use of instruments but never lets his experimentation get in the way of the musicality of a work.

See also the people who play carrot pan pipes! - CLICK HERE.

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