Early in the morning, the Oude Kerk is a meditative oasis in the city. Since 2017, on every first Friday of the month at 8 a.m., when the rising sun casts its light through the church’s towering windows and the neighbourhood slowly wakes up, visitors can enjoy the Silence music programme. The concerts celebrate the acoustics and space of the Oude Kerk, which invites mostly young, experimental musicians. There are no fixed seats; visitors are welcome to walk around and discover what the music sounds like in different places in the church.

What if we imagine ourselves from another planet? What if we make a sound document, a summary of how we see and hear our world? These are questions that Adrián Villar Rojas asked with his installation and soundscape Poems for Earthlings. In his piano work Catalog d'Oiseaux (1956-1958), the French composer Olivier Messiaen wanted to capture in his own way how he saw the earth, and in particular the landscape of France. The different colors, nature, and birds as residents and as part of that total. He creates timeless sound images of endless landscapes. In this Silence concert pianist Ralph van Raat played two of these landscapes, alternated with Preludes, compositions for piano by the young Messiaen.

Materials

Organ pipes

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