Sydney music festival prepares for car symphony

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Ready, maestro; start your engines.

A new musical piece called "Car Orchestra" which features the engines and horns of five utility trucks, known as "utes," alongside a saxophone, double bass and disc jockey, will debut at a music festival in western Sydney on Saturday.

Michael Atherton, a professor at the University of Western Sydney, says he composed the score to connect the festival with the local culture of the working-class Campbelltown area, inviting a local "Ute Club" to play the piece.

"A festival's concept of culture should be very broad," Atherton told the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper.

"People can expect to hear fanfares, jazz-funk sections, percussion solos. They will hear mag wheels played like Balinese gamelans," he said. (Reporting by Victoria Thieberger; Editing by Jerry Norton)