The performances

A Journey to the Sound of Istanbul

— Emine Bostancı: kemenche, electronics & voice

Bostancı’s music embodies Let Us Cook’s theme of reimagining the past – bridging folk music and contemporary sonic landscapes.
This performance was selected for this programme after a curator attended a performance of her ensemble – Dareyn.
Her music challenges the idea of musical heritage as something static. Instead Bostancı sees history and musical tradition as alive and constantly transforming.

‘When I met the kemenche for the very first time, a certainty overwhelmed me: this sound was the closest I would ever come to hearing the divine.’

Emine Bostancı was born in Istanbul but moved to the Netherlands in 2016. She combines the age-old tradition of kemenche playing with singing and contemporary electronics. As such, she takes us from our technology-driven present to the rich tradition of Istanbul.

Listening tip
The kemenche is a type of lyra – a bowed string instrument originating in ancient Turkey, Greece, and Armenia. Listen to how its airy sounds and microtonal inflections shape and colour the melodies it plays – at times weeping, at time flying.

Plastic Garden – Trellis

— Hye Young Sin: installation & performance

In the Foyer, we reimagine what a garden is and could be – recreating the sounds of nature with discarded plastic objects. This artwork was made especially for the Concertgebouw Brugge.
This installation invites audiences to listen with heightened awareness to sounds we often ignore in the rush of modern life. It is a space for stillness and reflection.
The curators came across Hye Young Sin’s impressive work on social media. Its beautiful joy and simplicity blurs the lines between nature and our digital lives, and aligns as such with the ethos of Let Us Cook.

Plastic Garden is a series of performative installations by Hye Young Sin, employing sound as an act of cultivation. The art work conceptualises a new type of garden, integrating the exhibition space as both medium and context for its realisation. Concertgebouw Brugge commissioned the last edition: Trellis. During the performance, trellis structures are transformed into string instruments or generate feedback sounds through their interaction. The project explores artificiality and ecological concerns by reimagining growth, where plants thrive not through water, but through sound. It reflects on how human actions reshape environmental processes and sociocultural patterns, challenging conventional understandings of nature while exploring the boundaries between living organisms and synthetic creations.

Watching tip
Sin’s art asks us to question: what does it mean to be natural? In the soundscape, listen to how the sounds imitate or reference the environment – wind, rain, soil, insects. Does it matter whether theses sounds are ‘real’ or artificial? Can a garden be made from plastic? As you move through around the garden, notice how your perception shifts: do the sounds of man-made objects bring us closer to nature? If plastic can echo the organic, what does that say about the world humans have built – and the one we are leaving behind?

Island: Inward Routes unto the Memory of the Improvised

— Pepe Dayaw: choreography & performance
— Koen Gijsman & Devon Gates: music

On the main stage: we will cook together!
In this performance, Pepe Dayaw takes us on a journey through memory via the sounds, smells, and taste of food. Devon Gates & Koen Gijsman provide live music.
The curators had heard several glowing reviews about Dayaw’s experimental performances along the grapevine. Their work and the larger themes of Let Us Cook are a perfect match.

There are things that we remember, and there are things that we don’t. That doesn’t mean these things are not there, our dressed-up memory and consciousness just could not access them. Island is a performative exploration of that which we call the 'improvised' or the 'unseen'. Pepe Dayaw and friends welcome you to a small tasting on an island in the middle of a sea of fantasies and histories; served warm, fluid and malleable enough, like a gentle dish, where it is possible to wonder about the mysteries of the past and re-member that which can never be forgotten.

The performance involves a small cooking process. Optionally and voluntarily, you may bring a small piece of leftover from your house and it will be incorporated into a dish which we can all taste and share once cooked.

Experience tip

Imagine how music is not only performed by instruments but in all of the sounds around us. Like music, cooking is not just about food: it is a ritual, a memory, a story. All of these elements come together in making a meal.
What are your best memories of food and cooking together with other people?

Pay special attention to the interactions between the piano, double bass – how they riff together and respond sights, smells, and sonic elements of the performance.