Residents with Orchestra

The Residents backed by a small string orchestra for So Long Sam in June 2010

Residents with Orchestra is the title informally ascribed to a cancelled performance by The Residents with an unspecified orchestra, which was briefly planned as part of an unspecified "festival in Europe" in 2008.

Ultimately the planned performance was cancelled only six days after it was first announced, due to schedule conflicts and the greater-than-expected expense of hiring an orchestra.

History

At a Q&A following a screening of the videos of The Residents at Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco on December 7th 2007, Homer Flynn (then Treasurer of The Cryptic Corporation) announced that the group were at that time considering a performance with an orchestra.

They had first performed with an orchestra at the Remembering The Beatles concert three months prior, during which they provided vocals and additional instrumentation for a cover of "Being For The Benefit of Mr. Kite" with the London Sinfonietta.

This information was posted to The Residents' Official News Blog the following day by their webmaster Big Brother, who further explained that the potential performance was "totally tied up in spreadsheets (meaning budgeting)", and that it was associated specifically with a "festival in Europe" and was not intended to become a touring project.

On December 13th, Big Brother posted an update to the blog, reporting that Hardy Fox (then President of The Cryptic Corporation) had said that the performance had been cancelled due to scheduling conflicts with the festival, as well as the fact that hiring an orchestra for the show was more expensive than they had first thought.

To date it has never been confirmed what material this performance would have included, or which orchestra the group were considering performing with. The Residents next performed with a small string orchestra in June 2010, for the one-off show So Long Sam.

See also

• Official News Blog, December 2007
• So Long Sam