Late Thursday

19:15, Wolter Wierbos (solo)
For trombonist Wolter Wierbos, it's all about flexibility: the fluctuation of tone and time, of line, strategy and setting. He improvises freely-associatively during his solo concerts, but does not forget that he is often praised for his ability to sound like a whole Ellington trombone section, from muted ya-yas to beautiful melody-statements, to dark shades.

In composed music, he loves nothing more than improvising. No wonder he was a key player in Misha Mengelberg's legendary ICP Orchestra for 30 years, and at Middelheim last year he proved a suitable sparring partner for Chris Defoort alongside his ICP friend, veteran drummer Han Bennink. "I see myself as a kind of sculptor or painter", he says, "who puts sound, rhythm and form into the music". If that doesn't fit nicely in a museum...

21:15, WADD (Giotis Damianidis / John Dikeman / Farida Amadou / Jakob Warmenbol)
A new formation of improvisers based in Belgium, but with a musical reach far beyond that. WADD is the acronym for John Dikeman (Spinifex, Dikeman Parker Drake, ...) on tenor saxophone, Giotis Damianidis (Don Kapot, Dark Ballads, Akira Sakata, ...) on guitar, Farida Amadou (Peter Brötzmann, Thurston Moore, ...) on bass and Jakob Warmenbol (Don Kapot, ...) on drums.

The band was born after a spontaneous session during the first lockdown in October 2020. Their first album, "First Party Cookie", a mix of hard experimental jazz noise, will be released in the summer. This uncompromising band excels at exciting, free, intense, totally improvised music that will blow you away!

You can discover 45 top works in POP ART From Warhol to Panamarenko From the Matthys-Colle & S.M.A.K. Collection. Pop art emerged in the mid-1950s and experienced its heyday in the 1960s. This autumn, S.M.A.K. will be portraying this art movement that is more topical than ever, just think of the impact of the (mass) media, the consumer society and the abundance of manipulated images.

You can see our collection through the eyes of children and young people in The Exhibition The Little Catalogue of the S.M.A.K. Collection. More than 400 children and young people had their say in S.M.A.K. and decided which collection works should be put on the entire first floor. With a maze, beanbags and a laboratory!