The story

A tower
you walk underneath.

Anyone who's spent time in Groningen's city centre knows the Academiegebouw. That tall, stately red brick building on the Broerstraat — impossible to miss. Everyone also knows the tower on top.

But what almost nobody knows: in that tower hangs something that sings.

What is a carillon, really?

A carillon is a musical instrument made of bronze bells. The carillon in the Academiegebouw is one of the older ones still around in the Netherlands. The bells are fixed in the tower with hammers against them, and those hammers are operated either via a wooden keyboard (a "baton-clavier") or a programmed mechanism.

What makes this particular carillon unusual is that the music changes. At most towers you hear the same three notes or the same traditional tune for decades. Here, someone deliberately chooses to do it differently — and that someone is the carillonneur.

The man above.

His name is Bob van der Linde. He's been carillonneur in the tower of the Academiegebouw for four years now, for the University of Groningen. Alongside that he also plays the Martinitoren in the city. How did he end up here? "More or less by accident," he says. "My first piano teacher was also the carillonneur of Zwolle. Through him, I got into it, around age twelve."

A carillonneur isn't just any musician. It stays physical work: you use fists and feet to set the bells swinging. And unlike a piano — "once a bell starts to ring, you can't stop it. Especially in the bass. So you can't do too much there, or it just becomes one big sludge."

The Academiegebouw's carillon has 2.5 octaves — a small version. The Martinitoren, a few hundred metres away, has 4.5: nearly twice as many bells, "a big spice rack," as Bob calls it. Here, he has to work with the essence. The melody. No seasoning. Takes getting used to, he says — "because if you're not careful, you end up playing in your own fairway."

What does he play?

That depends. "A bit on the season. If it's Eurovision time, I bring that folder. Nice weather? Some spring tunes. Raining? A rain song." And always a mix of classical and popular, "so there's something in there for everyone."

His favourites are the songs of or about Groningen. A tune about the Noorderplantsoen always lands well here — "because you feel it's really for this city." And when "15 Million People" was trending again last year, he played it on a day the city could use it. "Sending a peaceful message into the world, every now and then. I liked tapping into that."

The silent choice.

The small wonder this film is about lies here: there's always someone behind things. Even when you don't see it. A city is continuously shaped by decisions made without an audience — the fronts of the houses, the placement of the benches, and yes, the sound that rolls over you as you cross the Vismarkt.

Bob gets emails from neighbours, from composers at the conservatory, from colleagues at the front desk who turn it into a game: who's the first to guess the song. "It runs in a cycle of habits," he says. "People are tuned in. If I'm not there once, I'll get a text: 'weren't you there?'"

That's what the film tries to show. The choice is silent, but never empty. The city listens along — just not always out loud.

What we're doing.

In this short documentary we climb up, with the camera, and we film below too — on the street, among the bikes and voices. We don't want to make fun of anyone. Not the people who recognise their own bicycle bell as the only note of the street, and not the carillonneur working without an audience.

We just want to show the contrast: the intention on one side, the unaware city on the other. What emerges when you frame both sides of a divide at once.

It's not a plea to listen better. It's a quiet invitation.