Addi Somekh, a balloon artist, creates and plays a bass guitar out of balloons at the NextNow Festival in The Clarice on Friday, September 11, 2015.
While a long line of students snaked around the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center for Friday night’s soccer game, a smaller but equally enthusiastic crowd gathered inside for the third day of the University of Maryland’s multi-arts festival, NextNOW Fest.
That night, innovative balloon artist Addi Somekh treated festival guests to an unusual performance — one aimed to change how they define art, music and balloon-twisting talents.
Somekh said he started twisting balloons when he was 19 years old, as a source of money and distraction from social stresses. While he was initially embarrassed by his job, he eventually found deeper meaning in balloon twisting and came to consider balloons a genuine medium for art and expression.
“A balloon is ephemeral,” Somekh explained. “And subconsciously, we know we’re ephemeral … and we can project our own reality on this balloon. That’s why it affects us.”
He acknowledged his adult audiences are often skeptical, but he works to broaden their preconceived notions about balloons, both in terms of who can enjoy them and what they can do.
“When people hear about balloons, they generally think, ‘OK, it’s a kid thing,’” Somekh said. “But when they actually see it, they say, ‘Oh my god, I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s like an art form.’”
Bobby Asher, senior associate director for The Clarice, said that Somekh’s balloon art “made such a visual impact” when he was featured at last year’s inaugural NextNOW Fest, the festival’s organizers decided to invite him back this year.
“We gave him a bigger palate to work with,” Asher said, allowing Somekh not only the opportunity to perform, but also to decorate the performing arts center’s Grand Pavilion with his elaborate balloons. “It completely transforms the Pavilion and how it looks on a daily basis.”
At about 7 p.m., Somekh took to the NextNOW Fest stage inside the balloon-adorned Grand Pavilion of The Clarice, twisting a few balloons, as expected, but then plugging his creation into an amp and playing it like a bass guitar.
The idea originally came to Somekh from a fellow balloon artist, Sean Rooney, who developed a means of attaching balloons together to make sound. Though Somekh couldn’t remember his friend’s technique, he attempted to reverse-engineer what Rooney did.
“I just came up with my own way of doing it, my own way of playing it,” Somekh said.
While he has no classical training or experience with conventional instruments, Somekh said his music is inspired by the improvisational blues music he listened to growing up.
Over the course of only a few minutes, the audience of about 60 went from intrigued to impressed to transfixed by the instrument’s unique sounds, described by Somekh as “like an upright bass, except more airy than woody.”
Like a rock star who ends an impassioned solo by smashing his or her electric guitar, Somekh closed his performance by popping his balloon bass, to the audience’s delight.
Ahmad Uzair, a systems engineering graduate student and self-professed music-lover, said he had never heard music played with balloons before and enjoyed Somekh’s performance.
“It was really cool,” he said. “I really liked how he made everything right there and just started playing.”
“There’s a continuum between doing what you like and doing what other people like,” Somekh said. “I just try things, and when I come up with it, I try to market it.”
