Oorkaan Ensemble

Gong and the Four Noses With the Oorkaan Ensemble  A staged family concert for everyone aged 5 to 105.    This staged concert by Oorkaan is an amazing visual listening experience for anyone aged 5 and up. Even the most (in)experienced concertgoer will be swept up in the vivid world of Indonesian sounds and gamelan music. The theatrical elements make this an appealing concert experience for both young and old. BOING! Who hit the gong? Four noses point in all directions. There’s so much to discover. Instruments with buttons, strings and golden keys, and even a great big round one. And somewhere a Nose is hidden. Is it the Partygoer’s nose? Or is it an elephant’s trunk? An adventure unfolds that makes the Noses look beyond the end of them. And if a lid got on top of your nose, wouldn’t you just make music with it? The Oorkaan Ensemble collaborates with various creatives who have connections with Indonesia, with a common inspiration of the enchanting and hypnotic music of the Indonesian gamelan. The musicians wear their noses with pride, like contemporary versions of the famous Indonesian Panakawan clown servants. Little musical jokes go hand in hand with poetic sounds in this staged concert. “Gong and the Four Noses” is Oorkaan’s second production with the Oorkaan Ensemble, that consists of harpist Michela Zanoni, bajanist Robbrecht Van Cauwenberghe, percussionist Veysel Dzhesur and clarinettist Michele Mazzini. A special mention goes to Mazzini, who also performs with the Gamelan Orchestra at the Gamelan House, in Amsterdam, and is a driving force behind the performance. He received a commission to compose a piece especially for this production from the Performing Arts Fund Netherlands. The prominent young musicians of the Oorkaan Ensemble all play music from memory and are fluent in the physical acting style that typifies an Oorkaan staged concert. They have been trained in the Oorkaan method to become musicians who perform theatrically. The repertoire they play serves Oorkaan’s mission: to introduce as many big and small ears as possible to live performances of music and to break open the canon with global classical music.