“THE SOUNDS themselves are just so beautiful. They OPEN UP LISTENING to everything else.”
From a career creating theatrical experiences with BLUE MAN GROUP, Christopher Bowen introduces
A unique ‘group’ instrument is your guide through this collective and connective music experience inviting collaborative listening and an expansion of the senses by playing with sounds, images, and space.
Music as a felt experience belonging to everyone.
“This sense of SHARED HUMANITY when you are in a room full of strangers and you feel that you can CONNECT in such a deeper way - it’s wow.”
BELONGALONG is an experience that is as much about LISTENING and opening up SONIC SPACE for others as it is about one’s own EXPRESSION.
“There is this gentleness about it that transcends who we were in the room. We were all utterly equal.”
ABOUT BELONGALONG
BELONGALONG, at its heart, seeks non-ordinary ways to find playful connection and presence with others. Through the use of evocative imagery, music, and soundscapes, participants are guided from the discovery of the instrument through a series of visual and sonic pieces that create a relational field encouraging collaborative listening, opening up space for others and a feeling of connection in an otherworldly exploration of community. Participants play the Belongalong instrument composed of touch-sensitive sound-emanating boxes. Their vibrations are felt in the body and immediately participants realize that they themselves are the essential medium of the experience. Nothing comes to life without their collective intention.
Belongalong is inspired by the language of music and the sense of play that musicians have with each other as they contribute to the changing musical flow, experiencing their parts against the others while the resonances of their instruments vibrate against their bodies and into the space around them. It’s a sensation that allows them to connect and communicate on a different, more visceral, level. This particular kind of collaboration was the inspiration to create a similar field for other groups of people (musical or not) to experience.
ABOUT ME
I am a sound and visual performance artist, instrument inventor, musician, actor, and composer for film.
My explorations into interactive, immersive theatrical group experiences started in 1991 when I began my decades-long career with the internationally acclaimed and Grammy-nominated Blue Man Group. During this time, I was a Blue Man, Performer Director, Drummer, Composer, Writer, Instrument Creator, and Creative Development Director for the Group.
As a film composer, my scores include Cannes Camera d’Or winner 'Jellyfish’, the Annie-nominated stop-motion feature, ‘$9.99’, and the documentary feature, ‘Nathan-ism’, the 2023 winner of DocAviv’s Yad Vashem award.
