Playtoy Orchestra
About
Founded in 2002, the Playtoy Orchestra (PTO) is the first music band in the world to play real toy instruments, both toys designed to be played and toys that simply produce a sound. This gives the band a playful and humorous image as well as a completely original sound world.
The wide variety of plastic and hard-paper drums, together with the extravagant sounds of toy pianos, accordions and xylophones, has led the band toward an original, bright instrumental music genre whose creative arrangements and enjoyable melodies appeal to children and adults alike, music experts and amateurs alike: Lounge Music.
Movie soundtracks, successful advertising jingles and exotic atmospheres evoked by mambo and bossa nova rhythms form the basis of the brilliant musical collection performed by the Playtoy Orchestra, enriched with wit, sudden shifts in rhythm or style and melodic flourishes that immediately grip audiences of all ages.
The band, made up of six to eight professional musicians, adds to the positive groove of its Lounge collection with contemporary musical experiments inspired by well-known classical masterpieces. This allows the PTO to move from easy jazz to Rossini’s Tarantella, from Ennio Morricone’s unforgettable film scores to Mozart, from Quincy Jones’ Soul-Bossa-Nova to Vittorio Monti’s Csárdás. Creative reinterpretations of Beethoven, Brahms and Johann Strauss are also worth mentioning.
All pieces are played with toys, whose sounds take us back to childhood, a time in life when our creative energy flows freely, driven by pure fantasy and freedom of expression.
The PTO has performed all over the world: from Italy to Tunisia, from Colombia to South Korea, from Luxembourg to Albania, from France to Poland, from Portugal to Bulgaria, from China to Germany.
The band also shared the stage with the Piccolo Coro dell’Antoniano di Bologna, the internationally famous Italian children’s choir, the undisputed protagonist of Italy’s most important children’s music festival, the Zecchino d’Oro.
The PTO also performed on various TV and radio shows and was interviewed by many national and foreign media outlets.
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