London, UK (October 5, 2026)—In 1968, The Beatles recorded “Glass Onion” qt Abbey Road; now an actual onion has been recorded there, too.
This past August, the famed facility hosted a session by The London Vegetable Orchestra, a five-member ensemble of classically trained musicians who perform music on instruments built from fresh vegetables. The group hit the studio followed by a film crew, as they were there to record a piece called “Root Notes” for a Chipotle ad campaign, highlighting the restaurant chain’s ingredients. The whole process was captured for a three-minute documentary, From Ground to Sound, released today.
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Composer/producer John Nau, co-founder of Venice, CA-based Beacon Street Studios, helmed Studio Two’s custom AMS Neve 88RS console, which is featured extensively in the short film. While the ensemble is surrounded by numerous microphones in the film, with both close miking and overheads used, the specific models are not immediately discernable.
The session used a variety of unusual instruments, including a pan flute made of corn cobs; horns made of jalapeños, peppers and avocados; and a bass fashioned out of an onion.
While all recording sessions require keeping an eye on the clock, it turns out that producing produce is truly a race against time. Once vegetables are cut and turned into instruments, there is a limited window for their use, as they change shape and density over time, which in turn affects their ability to stay in tune.
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In other words, as the vegetables went bad, so did their notes—and yet their acoustic properties were what the session had to capture most clearly. As onion player Patrick Johns stated in the film, “I’d like it to sound as much like vegetables as it can.”
While the London Vegetable Orchestra might appear to be something made up for an ad campaign, the ensemble has been around since 2010, founded when its members were studying at the Royal Academy of Music. Over the years, it has performed on numerous TV shows, in ad campaigns for HelloFresh and LG, and even a Windsor Castle reception in 2025, where King Charles III himself sat in on lead carrot for an impromptu performance of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.”
