OnMilwaukee is a proud sponsor of QWERTYFEST MKE.The sounds a manual typewriter makes are music to some people’s ears. Such is the case with the Boston Typewriter Orchestra (BTO), and their thousands of fans worldwide.
The Boston Typewriter Orchestra – which is exactly that: an orchestra with Boston-based musicians who all play the typewriter – will make a rare Midwest appearance on Friday, June 21 during QWERTYFEST MKE’s Typewriter Ball at Turner Hall Ballroom. The show starts at 7 p.m. Tickets are $15 and available here.
Needless to say, the group is stoked to gig in the city where the typewriter was invented 151 years ago.
The orchestra, which will consist of six members for the Milwaukee show, manipulate typewriters to create original and cover songs that range in genre from Classical to Lounge Blues to Norwegian Black Metal. During performances, the group dresses in white button-up shirts and fat ties, poking fun of work culture.
Their typewriters of choice range in age and brand, including Underwood, Royal, IBM, Smith Corona, Hermes and Olivetti. But the louder the clacks and dings, the better.
“There are models that are ‘quiet’ and we’re obviously into the more obnoxiously loud models. Anything that has distinguishing sound features like a power space or an especially thumpy shift key we’ll use,” says typewriterist James Brockman. “We usually make modifications to some of the typewriters to make them more interesting sounding.”
Occasionally, they receive a note from a typewriter purist who believes modifying a vintage machine is blasphemy.
“Typewriter fetishists have said that we're destroying valuable irreplaceable equipment,” says typewriterist Brendan Quigley. “Well, duh!”
Recently, the group included a few new “instruments” to enhance the typewriter orchestra experience.
“We've begun expanding our palates with time clocks and desk bells,” says Quigley. “We’re even dipping a toe in more traditional music gear like effects pedals and metallophones.”
The band members create the songs solely by sound and without sheet music.
“We’re a conductor-less orchestra. Generally we’ll start a song idea with a particular sound, a rhythm that maybe we heard and are trying to replicate, or an especially odious expression we heard in a work Teams call that we want to make a joke out of,” says Brockman. “A combination of all of those things usually turns into something worth fleshing out.”
The Boston Typewriter Orchestra formed in 2004. They started out performing at house parties, eventually expanding to clubs, arts festivals and museums. Local and national media appearances soon followed, including spots on The Kelly Clarkson Show and NBC Nightly News. Group members appear in the documentary featuring typewriter enthusiast Tom Hanks called “California Typewriter,” and their song "Entropy Begins at the Office" was used in promotional ads for the 2017 film “The Post,” which also features Hanks.
Most of the BTO members knew each other from the indie music scene in Boston and wanted to do something unconventional.
“One of us is an actual real deal drummer. One of us is a metal shredder. One of us makes synth bloops and bleeps at a home studio,” says Brockman.
Boston Typewriter Orchestra members love typewriters, but they are not Luddites. All of them have interesting day jobs, some of which are in high-tech fields. Quigley is a crossword puzzle creator for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times Syndicate and The Onion. Brockman is a course director at Harvard Kennedy School; Alex Holman is a computational biologist; Chris Keene is a software engineer at Boston College; Derrik Albertelli is a law firm librarian; and Eric Donahue works in biotechnology.
The general response from audience members during one of their shows, according to Quigley, is shock.
“Typically audiences have their own ideas of what this is all about, and it's on us to blow them out of the water,” he says. “Basically, we've got the element of surprise because there's no other typewriter orchestras to compare to us.”
Get tickets to Boston Typewriter Orchestra at QWERTYFEST MKE's Typewriter Ball here.
Molly Snyder started writing and publishing her work at the age 10, when her community newspaper printed her poem, "The Unicorn.” Since then, she's expanded beyond the subject of mythical creatures and written in many different mediums but, nearest and dearest to her heart, thousands of articles for OnMilwaukee.
Molly is a regular contributor to FOX6 News and numerous radio stations as well as the co-host of "Dandelions: A Podcast For Women.” She's received five Milwaukee Press Club Awards, served as the Pfister Narrator and is the Wisconsin State Fair’s Celebrity Cream Puff Eating Champion of 2019.
