Stir Cheat Sheet: 4 aural adventures to catch at Music on Main’s kid-friendly BIG BANG Festival

Visitors can hit gamelan and percussion rooms, plus custom DJ sets and more, at the Roundhouse on February 15

By Janet Smith

Julia Chien

Music on Main and the Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Centre present the BIG BANG Festival at the Roundhouse on February 15

MUSIC ON MAIN is getting ready to celebrate Family Day weekend with its second BIG BANG Festival at the Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Centre. The celebration of sound is geared to children and youth five of age and up, as well as their musically minded friends and families.

Aural adventure is the name of the game, with two ticketed music rooms for $5, and the rest of the sound exploration free. Besides a colourful assortment of bands and sound art, there are food trucks out on the Roundhouse Turntable Plaza, plus activities like face painting; there’s even a Chill Room if kids need a break from the beautiful noise.

Below are just a few of the acts and activities to get young ears and minds in tune.

#1

Julia’s Music Room

Percussionist Julia Chien performs regularly with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, and has played for the likes of the National Arts Centre Orchestra, the Victoria Symphony, Turning Point Ensemble, and Continuum Contemporary Music. In her percussion duo Infamy Too!, with Aaron Graham, she plays everything from wood blocks to pop cans and gongs, and she is vibraphonist for the six-piece band Veda Hille Sisterhood. In Chien’s Music Room, the artist will reach back into her memory bank, playing the sounds that send her to sleep, including a famous Japanese folk song her grandma in Taiwan used to sing to her.

#2

Gamelan Music Room

Gamelan Kembang Telang offers visitors a chance to experience first-hand the shimmering metallophone-based sounds of Indonesia—an acoustic art form developed over centuries. Seated behind their compact instruments and using mallets in each hand, the three performers of Gamelan Kembang Telang layer their sounds with a special interlocking rhythmic technique.

#3

NOISE-O-GRAPH

Created by Roundhouse artist-in-residence Alison Woodward, this gizmo promises to take your supplied sound and use it to inspire a one-of-a-kind drawing for you to keep. We can’t reveal much more about the magnificent invention, but it’s all care of an artist whose work spans illustration, tattooing, book arts, painting, and more.

Silent Disco

#4

Silent Disco

DJ Niña Mendoza invites guests to listen through headphones and move their bodies to the tunes being spun. The fun part? Trying to guess whether the other people dancing are hearing the same music as you—because sometimes they are, and sometimes you're going it solo. Note that Mendoza is renowned for her deep love and knowledge of soul, R&B, hip-hop, boogie, and funk.  

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