The Car
Ensemble was founded in
Rotterdam in 1984 by the
Dutch artist and designer
Herbert Verhey and had its
premiere that year in the
Tom Tom Club in that city. The
scores were built up of blocks with
improvisation instructions to which the conductor had the opportunity to allow each segment a longer or shorter duration. The Car
Ensemble made use of
engine sounds,
car horns, the sound of
doors and
car radios, mixed with vocals, saxophone and
percussion. Those who operated the cars in the orchestra mostly had previously been involved with the
Concert For Thirty Cars ("Concert voor 30 Autos") by Herbert Verhey, performed on 23 October 1983 at a remote
helicopter platform near
Rotterdam. On invitation of the
Goethe Institut, the Car Ensemble performed on 5 September 1985 in
Düsseldorf, Germany. The cars for that occasion were operated by the local artists Marcel Hardung, Adolf Lechtenberg, Julia Lohmann, Gisela Kleinlein and Klaus Richter. The musicians were from the Netherlands: Marjo Kroese (vocals), Bob Stoute (
percussion) and Alan Purves (
percussion). A
recording of this concert was issued in 1986 on
flexi disc by
Time Based Arts in
Amsterdam. For performances of the Car Ensemble in Amsterdam on 13 and 14 June 1986, in the framework of the
Romantic Aesthetics Festival, a
drive-in cinema was set up whereby the Car Ensemble made use of a local radio station to broadcast additional sounds,
conversations and instructions to the
audience in their cars. The British
cinematographers
Richard Heslop and
Daniel Landin for that occasion were invited to direct a film,
Procar in cooperation with Herbert Verhey and to be used for back-drop projection. The
remastered audio recording of the event later on became the soundtrack of the film. In 1987,
Procar (16 mm, black and white, 19 mins.) was screened at the
Berlin International Film Festival. The last performance of the Car Ensemble was on 16 August 1987, at the invitation of the
Boulevard of Broken Dreams, a
theatre festival held that year in
's-Hertogenbosch. The Car Ensemble for that occasion worked together with the Dutch artist
Willem de Ridder, whereby the latter in a
radio broadcast directed citizens with their cars to a
parking lot in the city to take part in the orchestra. Although dissolved by Verhey in the fall of 1987, he gave one final performance with the Car Ensemble ("Nederlands Auto Ensemble") in June 1990 in
Hilversum (the Netherlands) on request of Han Reiziger for his TV program on classical and
contemporary music,
Reiziger in Muziek. Han Reiziger—who in 1983 had also broadcast the
Concert For Thirty Cars—then operated one of the cars of the orchestra. ==References==