Here's Jori Hulkkonen conducting his 303 orchestra at the UMF Festival in Turku, Finland in August. The sound is really awful, and you can't see what's going on, but it's a nice alternative to all those laptop orchestras. (Thanks, oerfil)
Posted by Tom Whitwell.
Heh, I just saw Ricardo VillaLobos' Narod Niki laptop orchestra in Berlin at the Admiralspalast. He had 8 guys with laptops on stage, plus a live Jazz band. The jazz band played an opening set of Jazz standards, and then the laptops started going, and then gradually, the jazz musicians came back on stage and did a combination of soloing, and some prearranged loops.
It was actually really good once things got warmed up, and after the Jazz dudes left it settled down into a kind of maximal minimal techno -- loads of twittery loops firing against the kick and getting mixed in and out.
to me it looks like one of those concepts that sounds really cool when you see the flyer, but then when you get there it's as completely meaningless and banal as you shoulda known it was gonna be.
the "conductor" trying to dance throws the performance into a sham of a sham - it can't be taken seriously. Those 303s have so much more potential......
we did a 303 orchestra in about 1996 in minneapolis. I think it was 16 303s, DJ ESP Woody McBride organized it, mixed it and ran an 808. He did a good job, bringing out soloists at various points and varying the texture. It was a HUGE sound system, big rave set up.