Awesome Orchestras

At the 2022 Mountbatten Festival of Music. The Bands of HM Royal Marines performed an epic medley of music by The Prodigy. Arranged by Band Corporal Aaron Pitman, the set included Out of Space, Breathe, Omen, No Good (Start the Dance), The Day is My Enemy, and Voodoo People, but sadly no Smack My Bitch Up or Firestarter.

A 32-piece orchestra needs need a pretty big stage for all of those musicians and their instruments. Jonathan Kayne has solved this problem by replacing those pesky humans with stepper motors. The members of his band never talk back, and they play everything from All-Star to Piano Man to The Mandalorian theme.

The members of The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain reminisce about the past as they look to a future in which they can once again travel the world. Backing their slideshow video is their warm and cheery cover version of the theme song from Star Trek: The Original Series.

Start celebrating the holidays with this festive medley of Christmas classics performed entirely on brass instruments. Musician Scott Sutherland put together this warm dose of holiday cheer along with 229 tuba and euphonium players from 21 countries around the globe.

The members of Epic Symphonic Rock provide their orchestral take on three rock classics by Deep Purple: Smoke on the Water, Burn, and Highway Star, a song that brings back memories of getting our asses handed to us playing Rock Band on Expert difficulty.

Orchestras have been around for hundreds of years. But why is it that certain instruments can be in an orchestra and others aren’t? Why do they have so many strings? Composer and educator David Bruce answers these and other questions about the origins of orchestras in this good-humored history lesson.

What we love about Dev Tunes Music’s orchestral video game medley is that they didn’t go with obvious song choices. Instead, they chose to battle between the very different musical styles of Sonic the Hedgehog 3, Wario World, Super Meat Boy, Punch-Out!, and Metal Gear Solid.

Members of the U.S. Army Band celebrated this past May the Fourth with a great orchestral version of Ludwig Göransson’s emotive and exotic theme from The Mandalorian. The performance is filled with wonderful woods and big brass sounds, but it’s strange to see musicians playing wind instruments with masks on.

During the COVID-19 lockdown, a group of 70 musicians and singers joined together remotely to perform this wonderful medley of music from the James Bond series. Many of the performers are based in Wales, with many folks being alumni of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.

A group of five talented musicians from the Colorado Symphony got together for a wonderful outdoor performance of the Eurythmics classic Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This). While we still can’t get out to see orchestras perform in person, please remember to support your local musicians.

Crank up the volume and brighten your day as Styx lead vocalist and guitarist Tommy Shaw and the talented musicians of the Contemporary Youth Orchestra perform an fantastic at home cover version of the classic rock hit Fooling Yourself (The Angry Young Man) from the 1977 album The Grand Illusion.

We just shared Kaleidoscope Orchestra’s excellent Daft Punk symphonic medley, and not 24 hours later, they dropped this even more epic video – a medley of more than 20 hit songs, all recorded by their members while locked down at home. Steve Pycroft deserves lots of credit for the orchestration and masterful video editing.

Shortly before going on lockdown in the UK, the musicians of Kaleidoscope Orchestra performed a medley of tracks from self-proclaimed rap god Eminem. The symphonic suite kicks off with Lose Yourself and Just Lose It, and includes classics like The Real Slim Shady, Without Me, and My Name Is.

The Colorado Symphony had to postpone its performances, but that didn’t stop their members from performing together. They just had to do it from home. To help keep the music alive, they played the uplifting Ode to Joy from Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. Keep an eye on their #PlayOn playlist for more shelter-in-place performances.

Vocalist Matthew Van Ness recorded himself performing each and every instrument for this acapella orchestral version of John Williams Star Wars main theme. He also did a version of the Dual of the Fates, and the theme from Avengers.

With its twangy mouth sounds, Jew’s harp (aka “jaw harp”) is one of the stranger instruments out there. For the most part, it’s an instrument that’s played by one musician at a time, but this ensemble of 30 or so harp players in Russia occasionally gets together to perform as a group, and the layered sound they make is wild.

Symphoniacs play orchestral arrangements of popular and classical music with a modern flair. Here, they perform an excellent cover version of Daft Punk’s Aerodynamic, on violin, cello, piano, and electronics. We also rather enjoyed their rendition of Coldplay’s A Sky Full of Stars.

During an outdoor concert being put on by the Vienna Chamber Festival in Izmir, Turkey, a stray dog decided to wander onto the stage and apparently liked what he heard. The pup settled right in as both a member of the audience and the orchestra. Who’s a good boy?

Composer and arranger Nick Proch and his band of merry musicians turn in an exceptional arrangement of Rage Against the Machine’s 1996 classic Bulls on Parade, played on traditional orchestral instruments. We have to say we miss the wah-wah a bit though.

The Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra and conductor JIMEK recently turned in this medley of classic hip hop tunes. We can’t decide if it it was more fun to hear Sure Shot or Get Ur Freak On played this way. (Thanks Michael!)

This footage of the Legend of Zelda 25th Anniversary Symphony recording the main theme medley was exclusive to Nintendo Video but can now be heard by all thanks to NintenDaanNC. Speakers up.