Silence #67: Allan Gilbert Balon
6 March 2026
8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m.
Special edition of the morning series Silence in collaboration with the music platform Sonic Acts.
Together with Sonic Acts, the leading festival for pioneering art, science and technology, we present a special edition of the music series Silence featuring artist and composer Allan Gilbert Balon.
Balon (b. 1986), born in Guadeloupe and now based in the suburbs of Paris, explores the subtle dimensions of listening in his work. His compositions play with the relationship between presence, memory and space, unfolding as intimate soundscapes in which piano phrases, tape textures and atmospheric tones converge.
For Silence, Balon creates a layered sound architecture from his own recordings and live frequencies. Within this soundscape resonate echoes of Thelonious Monk’s dissonant tensions, the meditative piano works of Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, and the minimalist approaches of Alvin Curran and Charlemagne Palestine – the latter having performed at Silence as recently as 2024.
About Sonic Acts Biennial 2026, Melted for Love
The Sonic Acts Biennial will take place in Amsterdam from 5 February to 29 March 2026, featuring more than 80 events across nearly 20 venues. The programme includes concerts, listening sessions, a conference, film screenings, exhibitions, masterclasses, workshops and site-specific projects, presenting the work of 200 artists. Under the title Melted for Love, this edition reflects on the notion of home not as a physical structure, but as a place of invitation, attentiveness and care. As borders shift, voices are drowned out and hostility intensifies, hospitality must be reinvented – not merely as a gesture, but as a quiet rebellion against the forces that seek to divide us.
About Silence
The music series Silence is a programme of morning concerts. Every first Friday of the month, as the city awakens, musicians explore the centuries-old acoustics of the Oude Kerk. At the heart of the Silence series is contemporary music, where acoustic, digital, and electronic sounds merge. Following in the footsteps of Sweelinck’s walking concerts centuries ago, the audience can move through the historic architecture while engaging with the music.
