Acoustics, performance, and instrument invention at Cyclophonica Bicycle Orchestra

Cyclophonica Bicycle Orchestra was created in 1999 in Rio de Janeiro- Brazil by the present author as a platform for experimenting new ways of music making, developing new instruments and techniques. Inspired by the traditional marching and animal-mounted bands, present all over the world, the project of Cyclophonica aimed at exploring open-air or closed ambients, involving or moving with the audience and being able to control “chamber” music performance and instruments, while ensuring safety to the players and listeners. Several questions were still open: which were the instruments that could be played?; would musicians be able to accelerate the tempo and reduce the bicycle speed independently?; how well would the performers coordinate music without a conductor or looking to each other?; how would the listeners receive such music that would be produced and diffused in a different way? A group of six musicians was formed in the beginning. Presently, after more than eighteen years later, the Cyclophonica has ten fixed members and two additional ones, and has performed more than two hundred and fifty times, in different festivals, events, and official ceremonies, almost always being paid for, being perhaps the only professional group of this kind in the world.