‘NOMAD - Soundpainting’

Nomad is a fixed part of every BIG BANG Festival. It is an invitation for a professional musician to make a performance or concert together with a group of children for which the festival offers a stage.

The Turkish dancer Ceren Oran is our Nomad artist this year. Ceren is a specialist in sound painting: a sign language of more than 1500 characters invented by the New Yorker Walter Thompson. You can also see sound painting as a way of conducting in which you can direct musicians of all levels and types. As a 'sound painter' you paint with sounds, as it were, and you mould the reactions of your players instantly into a unique composition.

For the BIG BANG Festival, Ceren works with various groups of children and conservatoire students. Tarmacadam and ZingZangZong present their show in Antwerp. The group from Maison des Cultures and Equinox are preparing the performance in Brussels, and in Ghent the children from OKAN are stealing the show together with students from KASK. In each city, a unique performance is being worked on, for which Ceren Oran is collaborating with improvisation musician Milly Groz and artist Loeke Vanhoutteghem.