Evelien van den Broek – Deadpan
For the special Dag in de Branding edition, composer Evelien van den Broek created the audiovisual composition Deadpan, inspired by silent film legend Buster Keaton. The performance consists of a series of short pieces in which pianist Nora Mulder and trombonist Koen Kaptijn trigger and manipulate film clips live, while performing a lively, dryly comedic electro-acoustic soundtrack. Evelien, a former Film Studies student, brings her enduring love of cinema together with music in a colorful, playful tribute to Keaton’s iconic deadpan style. The musicians take on the roles of cinema organist and explicateur, offering a modern interpretation of the classic slapstick tradition.

7090 – B[L]OOM
B[L]OOM is a sound art installation and an instrument, made of brass bells and the remains of a piano.
The chalices emit a soft but insistent song of longing and melancholy;
a molten sound world full of echoes, visions and resonances of what once was a piano.
It is a homage to David Tudor — pioneer of live electronics and sound installations —
and a bow to the radical openness with which he allowed music, space and chance to merge.
Or as G.K. Chesterton wrote long ago:
“In everything that yields gracefully, there must be resistance.
Bows are beautiful when they bend only because they seek to remain rigid.
Rigidity that slightly yields, like Justice swayed by Pity,
is all the beauty of the world. Everything seeks to grow straight, and happily,
nothing succeeds in so growing.
Try to grow straight and life will bend you.”