The idea is that there is nothing as rhythmically tight on God’s green earth as an orchestra. The strings usually act in a percussive way, so we didn’t want to put a drum set up there.

There is nothing as harmonically elegant and there is nothing as texturally elegant as an orchestra. And we wanted to take advantage of all those elements.

-Trey Anastasio of Phish

I read it here. Gee, it makes me want to hear the group’s music. (I don’t know them at all.)