Ilan Volkov is known for being a musical omnivore, someone you can talk to for hours on end about anything from Brahms symphonies to Flemish minimalism to Korean hyperpop. He launched the Tectonics Festival in 2012, which has since become one of the world’s most diverse and acclaimed celebrations of experimental and new music.

The 2026 two-days edition will take place in Flagey and will once again bring us together with our friends from the Brussels Philharmonic.
    

     

DAY 1 | JUNE 19, Flagey

JUNE 19

18:00-23:00, LOBBY, FOYER, STUDIO 2

SOUND INSTALLATION: SONIC HARVEST


David Dubois, Alice Van Biesen, Livia Slegers
Free entrance
         

     

JUNE 19

18:00-23:00, FOYER 3

EXPO: BAUDOUIN OOSTERLYNCK

Free entrance : interactive sessions with listening instruments
         

     

JUNE 19

18:00-23:00, STUDIO 3

SOUND INSTALLATION: FABIO MACHIAVELLI

Free entrance
            

     

JUNE 19

19:00, Studio 1 [Free!]

ICTUS PLAYS FREDERIC RZEWSKI

Coming Together / Attica

Frederic Rzewski was born in Massachusetts in 1938 and died in Italy in 2021. His work is haunted by the question of imprisonment and liberation. This can be understood both in the most concrete sense (Rzewski set to music, for example, the texts written by Oscar Wilde during his imprisonment for homosexuality), as well as in the figurative sense of artistic freedom (Boulez's 2nd Sonata, he once said in a lecture, reminds him of Michelangelo's slaves, whose bodies twist within the marble block that holds tem prisoner).

With the diptych Coming Together / Attica, written in 1975, Rzewski composed one of the most beautiful works “with narrator” in the history of modern music. The work is inspired by a prison riot in September 1971 at Attica Prison in New York State, where inmates simply demanded “to be treated like human beings.” The crackdown left more than forty people dead. Rzewski based his work on a letter written a few months before the events by Sam Melville, one of the prisoners who was killed. In a particularly powerful blend of nervous exhaustion, resilience, and irony, Melville describes how he regained his dignity through self-discipline (“In the indifferent brutality, the incessant noise, the experimental chemistry of food, the ravings of lost hysterical men, I can act with clarity and meaning”).

Based on a modal bass line, very similar to what could be experimented with at the time on the sequencers of emerging electronic pop music, Rzewski subjects Melville's text to a hyper-formalist editing and combination based on the number 7 and its square 49. He throws Melville's text “into prison,” so to speak, or into the heart of a “marble block” of musical procedures... against which the irresistible energy of the piece will come crashing down.

Programme
Frederic Rzewski: Coming Together | Attica (1975)
     
Artists
Tarek Halaby, speaker

Ictus:
Dirk Descheemaeker, bass clarinet
Aurélie Entringer, viola
Gerrit Nulens, percussion
Tom Pauwels, e-guitar
Jean-Luc Plouvier, synthesizer
Eva Reiter, Paetzold flute
Alexandre Fostier, sound
      

     

JUNE 19

20:00, Flagey

Brussels Philharmonic & Ilan Volkov

Can you listen to a building?

Music by Øyvind Torvund: Symphony for Kunstnernes Hus
Signe Emmeluth (saxophone),
Jørgen Træen (synths),
Jennifer Torrence (percussion)

Øyvind Torvund’s Symphony for Kunstnernes Hus is a symphony that presents itself as an artwork—and an artwork that takes the shape of a symphonic concert. An immersive experience unfolds throughout the building, with simultaneous musical moments inviting the audience to move freely and fully immerse themselves in the sound.
   

     

JUNE 19

21:00, Studio 4

FARIDA AMADOU + HEATHER LEIGH

improvisation by Farida Amadou (electric bass), 
Heather Leigh (pedal steel guitar)

The duo of Farida Amadou and Heather Leigh brings together two singular voices in contemporary experimental music. Working in the realm of free improvisation, they weave dense, visceral soundscapes where Amadou’s heavily processed electric bass collides with Leigh’s expansive, emotionally charged pedal steel guitar. Their music unfolds as a raw dialogue of texture, tension, and fleeting lyricism, constantly shifting between abstraction and deep sonic immersion. Their collaboration carries the spirit of their dearly belated friend and mentor, Peter Brötzmann, whose uncompromising approach to sound and improvisation continues to resonate through their work. Amadou and Leigh first performed as a duo at Cafe OTO in 2024, as part of the Brotz Festival honouring Brötzmann’s legacy. They later brought their collaboration to Summer Bummer Festival, further developing their intense and exploratory sonic language in a live setting.
      

     

JUNE 19

22:00, STUDIO 1

PAK YAN LAU / STRECKER / ICTUS

Interference

Pak Yan Lau has over the years established a captivating sound universe including prepared pianos, toy pianos, synths, electronics and various sound objects into which she invites percussionist Anita Cappuccinelli (Ictus, TUUM) to bring in her manifold sonic agencies and specialities.

Improvised music is necessarily spontaneous, and at the same time it is built on a background of personal experience, thought, experiment and aesthetic preferences.

With an attitude of careful openness, they collaboratively search for the unpredictable, for whatever is endlessly variable, for a music without history, for the emergence of new atmospheres.
This improvisational moment is framed with two pieces by Leonie Strecker, Interference (with Dirk Descheemaeker on bass clarinet) and chroma accuracy, in which she sounds out notions of presence, absence and the connections of memory and experience. Both pieces work with interference tones and phenomena of sonic displacement, whereby rhythmic elements are at the foreground in chroma accuracy and the space that arises between two or more sounds is central in Interference.

Programme
Leonie Strecker, Interference (2025)
Pak Yan Lau & Anita Cappuccinelli Duet
Leonie Strecker, Chroma Accuracy (2025)

Artists
Pak Yan Lau, prepared piano
Leonie Strecker, electronics

Ictus:
Anita Cappuccinelli, percussion
Dirk Descheemaeker, bass clarinet
Alexandre Fostier, sound
       

     

DAY #2 | JUNE 20, Flagey

JUNE 20

16:15-23:00, LOBBY, FOYER, STUDIO 2

SOUND INSTALLATION: SONIC HARVEST


David Dubois, Alice Van Biesen, Livia Slegers
Free entrance
      

     

JUNE 20

16:15-23:00, STUDIO 3

EXPO: BAUDOUIN OOSTERLYNCK

Free entrance : interactive sessions with listening instruments
    

JUNE 20

16:15-23:00, STUDIO 3

SOUND INSTALLATION: FABIO MACHIAVELLI

Free entrance
      

     

JUNE 20

20-06, 17:15, STUDIO 3 [Free!]

ICTUS PLAYS FABIO MACHIAVELLI

Micro Breaths of a Blue Lung

   
„First we shape our tools and then they shape us.“ (John M. Culkin)
In Machiavellis work (re-)shaping is a key.
For several years now, the core of his artistic activity is related to new lutherie, DIY practices as compositional processes, the development of new instruments as alternative sound surfaces and its implications — like so many composers of his generation. In that sense the instrumental apparatuses, the objects, technologies and concepts he creates unfold a potential as active participants in a transformative musical practice.
Micro Breaths of a Blue Lung engages with the vocal, percussive, and resonant dimensions of large marine mammals. The piece, a large 45-minute architecture composed of numerous miniatures, is an investigation into the timbral characteristics of cetaceans sounds which echo back within his instrumental devices.
During the concert the instruments are brought to life in interaction with the performers, but they can also be approached at times before and after the concert as stand-alone objects, unfolding an independent sonic existence.

Programme
Fabio Machiavelli, Micro Breath of a Blue Lung (2026)

Artists

Fabio Machiavelli, compositie & live electronics

Ictus:
Maris Pajuste, voice
Eva Reiter, Tom De Cock: sound devices
Alexandre Fostier, sound

Same concert at 22:00
        

     

JUNE 20

18:00, Studio 4

Vlaams Radiokoor and James Wood (conductor)

A living sound sculpture

Iannis Xenakis, Serment / Nuits and Giacinto Scelsi, Yliam per coro femminile / Tre Canti Sacri

The human voice at its most exposed: raw, intense, and stripped of language. In this programme, Xenakis and Scelsi return to the essence of vocal music: a living sound sculpture, shaped by shifting textures, sonic fields and massed vocal gestures. Not a narrative, but a physical listening experience, grounded in breath, space and the power of sound.
       

     

JUNE 20

20.06, 19:00 Studio 1

Jennifer Torrence

improvisation and music by Walter Zimmermann, Riuti
by Jennifer Torrence (percussion)

Jennifer Torrence approaches music through ‘physical movements and principles of motion’. In a one-woman ‘dance band’ setup, she performs on a set of ‘naive’ instruments including whirly tubes, an Orff marimba, fidget spinners, handbells, foot-played melodicas, and spinning microphones attached to a cymbal. These instruments also appear in Øyvind Torvund’s Symphony for Kunstnernes Hus, heard at Tectonics on Friday. Here, movement becomes sound—and sound, in turn, sets movement back in motion.
      

     

JUNE 20

20.06, 20:30, Studio 4

Brussels Philharmonic & Ilan Volkov

Verlaak & Miller

Music by Maya Verlaak
Sci-Volo Palla (world premiere)
and Cassandra Miller, Dad Goes to the Mountain (world premiere)

Sarah Saviet (violin)
Jasmijn Lootens (cello)
Maya Verlaak, in her typical fashion, tosses aside all conventions and turns – with new rules, electronics, and a classical orchestra setup – the piece into a social experiment.

Cassandra Miller wrote Dad Goes to the Mountain as a single-movement composition in four chapters, for her father: "In his old age, he developed vascular dementia which impacted his spacial awareness and short-term memory, but which left his personality largely intact. I feel he was somehow transfigured by the experience. This transfiguration—and lightness—are the topics of this piece. It is about a general upward ascending, about forgetting (un-knowing), and about the fluidity of time.”

Met de steun van Beside Tax Shelter en de Belgische Taxshelter.
     

     

JUNE 20

20.06, 22:00, Hall Flagey

For Those Who Live At The Shoreline

performance by Hoda Siahtiri and Shaahin Peymani

For Those Who Live At The Shoreline is a ceremonial performance—an experience shaped around the duality of light and darkness. Its title is drawn from Audre Lorde’s poem A Litany For Survival: ‘for those who carry fear like a faint line within themselves’. Created in Tehran in January 2026, the work speaks to those living in a climate of fear, and feeling the urge to break free from it.

Hoda and Shaahin weave electronics together with the sounds of mountains and landscapes. The sonic structure is built on repetition and gradual transformation, evoking the movement of tides: a cycle of pulse and decay in which patterns emerge, shift, and dissolve again.
      

       

JUNE 20

20-06, 22:00, STUDIO 3 [Free!]

ICTUS PLAYS FABIO MACHIAVELLI

Micro Breaths of a Blue Lung

   
„First we shape our tools and then they shape us.“ (John M. Culkin)
In Machiavellis work (re-)shaping is a key.
For several years now, the core of his artistic activity is related to new lutherie, DIY practices as compositional processes, the development of new instruments as alternative sound surfaces and its implications — like so many composers of his generation. In that sense the instrumental apparatuses, the objects, technologies and concepts he creates unfold a potential as active participants in a transformative musical practice.
Micro Breaths of a Blue Lung engages with the vocal, percussive, and resonant dimensions of large marine mammals. The piece, a large 45-minute architecture composed of numerous miniatures, is an investigation into the timbral characteristics of cetaceans sounds which echo back within his instrumental devices.
During the concert the instruments are brought to life in interaction with the performers, but they can also be approached at times before and after the concert as stand-alone objects, unfolding an independent sonic existence.

Programme
Fabio Machiavelli, Micro Breath of a Blue Lung (2026)

Artists
Fabio Machiavelli, compositie & live electronics

Ictus:
Maris Pajuste, voice
Eva Reiter, Tom De Cock: sound devices
Alexandre Fostier, sound    

Same concert at 17:15 
     

     

Ilan Volkov is een beruchte muzikale omnivoor - het soort dirigent met wie je de hele avond kan praten over alle muziek in het universum en ver daarbuiten, van Brahms' symfonieën tot Vlaams minimalisme en Koreaanse hyperpop. Ilan lanceerde in 2012 het boeiende festival-format Tectonics, dat sindsdien is uitgegroeid tot een van de meest eclectische en gewaardeerde festivals voor nieuwe en experimentele muziek ter wereld.

Tijdens de editie van 2026, die twee dagen lang in Flagey plaatsvindt, zullen we opnieuw het podium delen met onze vrienden van het Brussels Philharmonic.
   

     

DAY 1 | JUNE 19, Flagey

JUNE 19

17:00-23:00, LOBBY, FOYER, STUDIO 2

SOUND INSTALLATION: SONIC HARVEST


David Dubois, Alice Van Biesen, Livia Slegers
Free entrance
         

     

JUNE 19

18:00-23:00, FOYER 3

EXPO: BAUDOUIN OOSTERLYNCK

Free entrance : interactive sessions with listening instruments
         

     

JUNE 19

17:00-23:00, STUDIO 3

SOUND INSTALLATION: FABIO MACHIAVELLI

Free entrance
            

     

JUNE 19

19:00, Studio 1 [Free!]

ICTUS PLAYS FREDERIC RZEWSKI

Coming Together / Attica

Frederic Rzewski was born in Massachusetts in 1938 and died in Italy in 2021. His work is haunted by the question of imprisonment and liberation. This can be understood both in the most concrete sense (Rzewski set to music, for example, the texts written by Oscar Wilde during his imprisonment for homosexuality), as well as in the figurative sense of artistic freedom (Boulez's 2nd Sonata, he once said in a lecture, reminds him of Michelangelo's slaves, whose bodies twist within the marble block that holds tem prisoner).

With the diptych Coming Together / Attica, written in 1975, Rzewski composed one of the most beautiful works “with narrator” in the history of modern music. The work is inspired by a prison riot in September 1971 at Attica Prison in New York State, where inmates simply demanded “to be treated like human beings.” The crackdown left more than forty people dead. Rzewski based his work on a letter written a few months before the events by Sam Melville, one of the prisoners who was killed. In a particularly powerful blend of nervous exhaustion, resilience, and irony, Melville describes how he regained his dignity through self-discipline (“In the indifferent brutality, the incessant noise, the experimental chemistry of food, the ravings of lost hysterical men, I can act with clarity and meaning”).

Based on a modal bass line, very similar to what could be experimented with at the time on the sequencers of emerging electronic pop music, Rzewski subjects Melville's text to a hyper-formalist editing and combination based on the number 7 and its square 49. He throws Melville's text “into prison,” so to speak, or into the heart of a “marble block” of musical procedures... against which the irresistible energy of the piece will come crashing down.

Programme
Frederic Rzewski: Coming Together | Attica (1975)
     
Artists
Tarek Halaby, speaker

Ictus:
Dirk Descheemaeker, bass clarinet
Aurélie Entringer, viola
Gerrit Nulens, percussion
Tom Pauwels, e-guitar
Jean-Luc Plouvier, synthesizer
Eva Reiter, Paetzold flute
Alexandre Fostier, sound
      

     

JUNE 19

20:00, Flagey

Brussels Philharmonic & Ilan Volkov

Can you listen to a building?

Music by Øyvind Torvund: Symphony for Kunstnernes Hus
Signe Emmeluth (saxophone),
Jørgen Træen (synths),
Jennifer Torrence (percussion)

Øyvind Torvund’s Symphony for Kunstnernes Hus is a symphony that presents itself as an artwork—and an artwork that takes the shape of a symphonic concert. An immersive experience unfolds throughout the building, with simultaneous musical moments inviting the audience to move freely and fully immerse themselves in the sound.
   

     

JUNE 19

21:00, Studio 4

FARIDA AMADOU + HEATHER LEIGH

improvisation by Farida Amadou (electric bass), 
Heather Leigh (pedal steel guitar)

The duo of Farida Amadou and Heather Leigh brings together two singular voices in contemporary experimental music. Working in the realm of free improvisation, they weave dense, visceral soundscapes where Amadou’s heavily processed electric bass collides with Leigh’s expansive, emotionally charged pedal steel guitar. Their music unfolds as a raw dialogue of texture, tension, and fleeting lyricism, constantly shifting between abstraction and deep sonic immersion. Their collaboration carries the spirit of their dearly belated friend and mentor, Peter Brötzmann, whose uncompromising approach to sound and improvisation continues to resonate through their work. Amadou and Leigh first performed as a duo at Cafe OTO in 2024, as part of the Brotz Festival honouring Brötzmann’s legacy. They later brought their collaboration to Summer Bummer Festival, further developing their intense and exploratory sonic language in a live setting.
      

     

JUNE 19

22:00, STUDIO 1

PAK YAN LAU / STRECKER / ICTUS

Interference

Pak Yan Lau has over the years established a captivating sound universe including prepared pianos, toy pianos, synths, electronics and various sound objects into which she invites percussionist Anita Cappuccinelli (Ictus, TUUM) to bring in her manifold sonic agencies and specialities.

Improvised music is necessarily spontaneous, and at the same time it is built on a background of personal experience, thought, experiment and aesthetic preferences.

With an attitude of careful openness, they collaboratively search for the unpredictable, for whatever is endlessly variable, for a music without history, for the emergence of new atmospheres.
This improvisational moment is framed with two pieces by Leonie Strecker, Interference (with Dirk Descheemaeker on bass clarinet) and chroma accuracy, in which she sounds out notions of presence, absence and the connections of memory and experience. Both pieces work with interference tones and phenomena of sonic displacement, whereby rhythmic elements are at the foreground in chroma accuracy and the space that arises between two or more sounds is central in Interference.

Programme
Leonie Strecker, Interference (2025)
Pak Yan Lau & Anita Cappuccinelli Duet
Leonie Strecker, Chroma Accuracy (2025)

Artists
Pak Yan Lau, prepared piano
Leonie Strecker, electronics

Ictus:
Anita Cappuccinelli, percussion
Dirk Descheemaeker, bass clarinet
Alexandre Fostier, sound
       

     

DAY #2 | JUNE 20, Flagey

JUNE 20

17:00-23:00, LOBBY, FOYER, STUDIO 2

SOUND INSTALLATION: SONIC HARVEST


David Dubois, Alice Van Biesen, Livia Slegers
Free entrance
      

     

JUNE 20

16:00-23:00, STUDIO 3

EXPO: BAUDOUIN OOSTERLYNCK

Free entrance : interactive sessions with listening instruments
      

     

JUNE 20

20-06, 17:15, STUDIO 3 [Free!]

ICTUS PLAYS FABIO MACHIAVELLI

Micro Breaths of a Blue Lung

   
„First we shape our tools and then they shape us.“ (John M. Culkin)
In Machiavellis work (re-)shaping is a key.
For several years now, the core of his artistic activity is related to new lutherie, DIY practices as compositional processes, the development of new instruments as alternative sound surfaces and its implications — like so many composers of his generation. In that sense the instrumental apparatuses, the objects, technologies and concepts he creates unfold a potential as active participants in a transformative musical practice.
Micro Breaths of a Blue Lung engages with the vocal, percussive, and resonant dimensions of large marine mammals. The piece, a large 45-minute architecture composed of numerous miniatures, is an investigation into the timbral characteristics of cetaceans sounds which echo back within his instrumental devices.
During the concert the instruments are brought to life in interaction with the performers, but they can also be approached at times before and after the concert as stand-alone objects, unfolding an independent sonic existence.

Programme
Fabio Machiavelli, Micro Breath of a Blue Lung (2026)

Artists

Fabio Machiavelli, compositie & live electronics

Ictus:
Maris Pajuste, voice
Eva Reiter, Tom De Cock: sound devices
Alexandre Fostier, sound

Same concert at 22:00
        

     

JUNE 20

18:00, Studio 4

Vlaams Radiokoor and James Wood (conductor)

A living sound sculpture

Iannis Xenakis, Serment / Nuits and Giacinto Scelsi, Yliam per coro femminile / Tre Canti Sacri

The human voice at its most exposed: raw, intense, and stripped of language. In this programme, Xenakis and Scelsi return to the essence of vocal music: a living sound sculpture, shaped by shifting textures, sonic fields and massed vocal gestures. Not a narrative, but a physical listening experience, grounded in breath, space and the power of sound.
       

     

JUNE 20

20.06, 19:00 Studio 1

Jennifer Torrence

improvisation and music by Walter Zimmermann, Riuti
by Jennifer Torrence (percussion)

Jennifer Torrence approaches music through ‘physical movements and principles of motion’. In a one-woman ‘dance band’ setup, she performs on a set of ‘naive’ instruments including whirly tubes, an Orff marimba, fidget spinners, handbells, foot-played melodicas, and spinning microphones attached to a cymbal. These instruments also appear in Øyvind Torvund’s Symphony for Kunstnernes Hus, heard at Tectonics on Friday. Here, movement becomes sound—and sound, in turn, sets movement back in motion.
      

     

JUNE 20

20.06, 20:30, Studio 4

Brussels Philharmonic & Ilan Volkov

Verlaak & Miller

Music by Maya Verlaak
Sci-Volo Palla (world premiere)
and Cassandra Miller, Dad Goes to the Mountain (world premiere)

Sarah Saviet (violin)
Jasmijn Lootens (cello)
Maya Verlaak, in her typical fashion, tosses aside all conventions and turns – with new rules, electronics, and a classical orchestra setup – the piece into a social experiment.

Cassandra Miller wrote Dad Goes to the Mountain as a single-movement composition in four chapters, for her father: "In his old age, he developed vascular dementia which impacted his spacial awareness and short-term memory, but which left his personality largely intact. I feel he was somehow transfigured by the experience. This transfiguration—and lightness—are the topics of this piece. It is about a general upward ascending, about forgetting (un-knowing), and about the fluidity of time.”
     

     

JUNE 20

20.06, 22:00, Hall Flagey

For Those Who Live At The Shoreline

performance by Hoda Siahtiri and Shaahin Peymani

For Those Who Live At The Shoreline is a ceremonial performance—an experience shaped around the duality of light and darkness. Its title is drawn from Audre Lorde’s poem A Litany For Survival: ‘for those who carry fear like a faint line within themselves’. Created in Tehran in January 2026, the work speaks to those living in a climate of fear, and feeling the urge to break free from it.

Hoda and Shaahin weave electronics together with the sounds of mountains and landscapes. The sonic structure is built on repetition and gradual transformation, evoking the movement of tides: a cycle of pulse and decay in which patterns emerge, shift, and dissolve again.
      

       

JUNE 20

20-06, 22:00, STUDIO 3 [Free!]

ICTUS PLAYS FABIO MACHIAVELLI

Micro Breaths of a Blue Lung

   
„First we shape our tools and then they shape us.“ (John M. Culkin)
In Machiavellis work (re-)shaping is a key.
For several years now, the core of his artistic activity is related to new lutherie, DIY practices as compositional processes, the development of new instruments as alternative sound surfaces and its implications — like so many composers of his generation. In that sense the instrumental apparatuses, the objects, technologies and concepts he creates unfold a potential as active participants in a transformative musical practice.
Micro Breaths of a Blue Lung engages with the vocal, percussive, and resonant dimensions of large marine mammals. The piece, a large 45-minute architecture composed of numerous miniatures, is an investigation into the timbral characteristics of cetaceans sounds which echo back within his instrumental devices.
During the concert the instruments are brought to life in interaction with the performers, but they can also be approached at times before and after the concert as stand-alone objects, unfolding an independent sonic existence.

Programme
Fabio Machiavelli, Micro Breath of a Blue Lung (2026)

Artists
Fabio Machiavelli, compositie & live electronics

Ictus:
Maris Pajuste, voice
Eva Reiter, Tom De Cock: sound devices
Alexandre Fostier, sound    

Same concert at 17:15 
     

     

Ilan Volkov est réputé pour son appétit d'omnivore musical — le genre de chef d'orchestre avec qui vous pouvez parler des soirées entières de toutes les musiques de la galaxie et au-delà, depuis les symphonies de Brahms jusqu'au minimalisme flamand, en passant par l'hyperpop coréenne. Ilan a lancé le passionnant festival Tectonics en 2012, devenu depuis lors l'un des festivals de musiques nouvelles et expérimentales les plus éclectiques et les plus appréciés au monde.

L'édition 2026, qui se déroulera sur deux jours à Flagey, nous fera partager le plateau une fois de plus avec nos amis du Brussels Philharmonic.
    

     

DAY 1 | JUNE 19, Flagey

JUNE 19

17:00-23:00, LOBBY, FOYER, STUDIO 2

SOUND INSTALLATION: SONIC HARVEST


David Dubois, Alice Van Biesen, Livia Slegers
Free entrance
         

     

JUNE 19

18:00-23:00, FOYER 3

EXPO: BAUDOUIN OOSTERLYNCK

Free entrance : interactive sessions with listening instruments
         

     

JUNE 19

17:00-23:00, STUDIO 3

SOUND INSTALLATION: FABIO MACHIAVELLI

Free entrance
            

     

JUNE 19

19:00, Studio 1 [Free!]

ICTUS PLAYS FREDERIC RZEWSKI

Coming Together / Attica

Frederic Rzewski was born in Massachusetts in 1938 and died in Italy in 2021. His work is haunted by the question of imprisonment and liberation. This can be understood both in the most concrete sense (Rzewski set to music, for example, the texts written by Oscar Wilde during his imprisonment for homosexuality), as well as in the figurative sense of artistic freedom (Boulez's 2nd Sonata, he once said in a lecture, reminds him of Michelangelo's slaves, whose bodies twist within the marble block that holds tem prisoner).

With the diptych Coming Together / Attica, written in 1975, Rzewski composed one of the most beautiful works “with narrator” in the history of modern music. The work is inspired by a prison riot in September 1971 at Attica Prison in New York State, where inmates simply demanded “to be treated like human beings.” The crackdown left more than forty people dead. Rzewski based his work on a letter written a few months before the events by Sam Melville, one of the prisoners who was killed. In a particularly powerful blend of nervous exhaustion, resilience, and irony, Melville describes how he regained his dignity through self-discipline (“In the indifferent brutality, the incessant noise, the experimental chemistry of food, the ravings of lost hysterical men, I can act with clarity and meaning”).

Based on a modal bass line, very similar to what could be experimented with at the time on the sequencers of emerging electronic pop music, Rzewski subjects Melville's text to a hyper-formalist editing and combination based on the number 7 and its square 49. He throws Melville's text “into prison,” so to speak, or into the heart of a “marble block” of musical procedures... against which the irresistible energy of the piece will come crashing down.

Programme
Frederic Rzewski: Coming Together | Attica (1975)
     
Artists
Tarek Halaby, speaker

Ictus:
Dirk Descheemaeker, bass clarinet
Aurélie Entringer, viola
Gerrit Nulens, percussion
Tom Pauwels, e-guitar
Jean-Luc Plouvier, synthesizer
Eva Reiter, Paetzold flute
Alexandre Fostier, sound
      

     

JUNE 19

20:00, Flagey

Brussels Philharmonic & Ilan Volkov

Can you listen to a building?

Music by Øyvind Torvund: Symphony for Kunstnernes Hus
Signe Emmeluth (saxophone),
Jørgen Træen (synths),
Jennifer Torrence (percussion)

Øyvind Torvund’s Symphony for Kunstnernes Hus is a symphony that presents itself as an artwork—and an artwork that takes the shape of a symphonic concert. An immersive experience unfolds throughout the building, with simultaneous musical moments inviting the audience to move freely and fully immerse themselves in the sound.
   

     

JUNE 19

21:00, Studio 4

FARIDA AMADOU + HEATHER LEIGH

improvisation by Farida Amadou (electric bass), 
Heather Leigh (pedal steel guitar)

The duo of Farida Amadou and Heather Leigh brings together two singular voices in contemporary experimental music. Working in the realm of free improvisation, they weave dense, visceral soundscapes where Amadou’s heavily processed electric bass collides with Leigh’s expansive, emotionally charged pedal steel guitar. Their music unfolds as a raw dialogue of texture, tension, and fleeting lyricism, constantly shifting between abstraction and deep sonic immersion. Their collaboration carries the spirit of their dearly belated friend and mentor, Peter Brötzmann, whose uncompromising approach to sound and improvisation continues to resonate through their work. Amadou and Leigh first performed as a duo at Cafe OTO in 2024, as part of the Brotz Festival honouring Brötzmann’s legacy. They later brought their collaboration to Summer Bummer Festival, further developing their intense and exploratory sonic language in a live setting.
      

     

JUNE 19

22:00, STUDIO 1

PAK YAN LAU / STRECKER / ICTUS

Interference

Pak Yan Lau has over the years established a captivating sound universe including prepared pianos, toy pianos, synths, electronics and various sound objects into which she invites percussionist Anita Cappuccinelli (Ictus, TUUM) to bring in her manifold sonic agencies and specialities.

Improvised music is necessarily spontaneous, and at the same time it is built on a background of personal experience, thought, experiment and aesthetic preferences.

With an attitude of careful openness, they collaboratively search for the unpredictable, for whatever is endlessly variable, for a music without history, for the emergence of new atmospheres.
This improvisational moment is framed with two pieces by Leonie Strecker, Interference (with Dirk Descheemaeker on bass clarinet) and chroma accuracy, in which she sounds out notions of presence, absence and the connections of memory and experience. Both pieces work with interference tones and phenomena of sonic displacement, whereby rhythmic elements are at the foreground in chroma accuracy and the space that arises between two or more sounds is central in Interference.

Programme
Leonie Strecker, Interference (2025)
Pak Yan Lau & Anita Cappuccinelli Duet
Leonie Strecker, Chroma Accuracy (2025)

Artists
Pak Yan Lau, prepared piano
Leonie Strecker, electronics

Ictus:
Anita Cappuccinelli, percussion
Dirk Descheemaeker, bass clarinet
Alexandre Fostier, sound
       

     

DAY #2 | JUNE 20, Flagey

JUNE 20

17:00-23:00, LOBBY, FOYER, STUDIO 2

SOUND INSTALLATION: SONIC HARVEST


David Dubois, Alice Van Biesen, Livia Slegers
Free entrance
      

     

JUNE 20

16:00-23:00, STUDIO 3

EXPO: BAUDOUIN OOSTERLYNCK

Free entrance : interactive sessions with listening instruments
      

     

JUNE 20

20-06, 17:15, STUDIO 3 [Free!]

ICTUS PLAYS FABIO MACHIAVELLI

Micro Breaths of a Blue Lung

   
„First we shape our tools and then they shape us.“ (John M. Culkin)
In Machiavellis work (re-)shaping is a key.
For several years now, the core of his artistic activity is related to new lutherie, DIY practices as compositional processes, the development of new instruments as alternative sound surfaces and its implications — like so many composers of his generation. In that sense the instrumental apparatuses, the objects, technologies and concepts he creates unfold a potential as active participants in a transformative musical practice.
Micro Breaths of a Blue Lung engages with the vocal, percussive, and resonant dimensions of large marine mammals. The piece, a large 45-minute architecture composed of numerous miniatures, is an investigation into the timbral characteristics of cetaceans sounds which echo back within his instrumental devices.
During the concert the instruments are brought to life in interaction with the performers, but they can also be approached at times before and after the concert as stand-alone objects, unfolding an independent sonic existence.

Programme
Fabio Machiavelli, Micro Breath of a Blue Lung (2026)

Artists

Fabio Machiavelli, compositie & live electronics

Ictus:
Maris Pajuste, voice
Eva Reiter, Tom De Cock: sound devices
Alexandre Fostier, sound

Same concert at 22:00
        

     

JUNE 20

18:00, Studio 4

Vlaams Radiokoor and James Wood (conductor)

A living sound sculpture

Iannis Xenakis, Serment / Nuits and Giacinto Scelsi, Yliam per coro femminile / Tre Canti Sacri

The human voice at its most exposed: raw, intense, and stripped of language. In this programme, Xenakis and Scelsi return to the essence of vocal music: a living sound sculpture, shaped by shifting textures, sonic fields and massed vocal gestures. Not a narrative, but a physical listening experience, grounded in breath, space and the power of sound.
       

     

JUNE 20

20.06, 19:00 Studio 1

Jennifer Torrence

improvisation and music by Walter Zimmermann, Riuti
by Jennifer Torrence (percussion)

Jennifer Torrence approaches music through ‘physical movements and principles of motion’. In a one-woman ‘dance band’ setup, she performs on a set of ‘naive’ instruments including whirly tubes, an Orff marimba, fidget spinners, handbells, foot-played melodicas, and spinning microphones attached to a cymbal. These instruments also appear in Øyvind Torvund’s Symphony for Kunstnernes Hus, heard at Tectonics on Friday. Here, movement becomes sound—and sound, in turn, sets movement back in motion.
      

     

JUNE 20

20.06, 20:30, Studio 4

Brussels Philharmonic & Ilan Volkov

Verlaak & Miller

Music by Maya Verlaak
Sci-Volo Palla (world premiere)
and Cassandra Miller, Dad Goes to the Mountain (world premiere)

Sarah Saviet (violin)
Jasmijn Lootens (cello)
Maya Verlaak, in her typical fashion, tosses aside all conventions and turns – with new rules, electronics, and a classical orchestra setup – the piece into a social experiment.

Cassandra Miller wrote Dad Goes to the Mountain as a single-movement composition in four chapters, for her father: "In his old age, he developed vascular dementia which impacted his spacial awareness and short-term memory, but which left his personality largely intact. I feel he was somehow transfigured by the experience. This transfiguration—and lightness—are the topics of this piece. It is about a general upward ascending, about forgetting (un-knowing), and about the fluidity of time.”
     

     

JUNE 20

20.06, 22:00, Hall Flagey

For Those Who Live At The Shoreline

performance by Hoda Siahtiri and Shaahin Peymani

For Those Who Live At The Shoreline is a ceremonial performance—an experience shaped around the duality of light and darkness. Its title is drawn from Audre Lorde’s poem A Litany For Survival: ‘for those who carry fear like a faint line within themselves’. Created in Tehran in January 2026, the work speaks to those living in a climate of fear, and feeling the urge to break free from it.

Hoda and Shaahin weave electronics together with the sounds of mountains and landscapes. The sonic structure is built on repetition and gradual transformation, evoking the movement of tides: a cycle of pulse and decay in which patterns emerge, shift, and dissolve again.
      

       

JUNE 20

20-06, 22:00, STUDIO 3 [Free!]

ICTUS PLAYS FABIO MACHIAVELLI

Micro Breaths of a Blue Lung

   
„First we shape our tools and then they shape us.“ (John M. Culkin)
In Machiavellis work (re-)shaping is a key.
For several years now, the core of his artistic activity is related to new lutherie, DIY practices as compositional processes, the development of new instruments as alternative sound surfaces and its implications — like so many composers of his generation. In that sense the instrumental apparatuses, the objects, technologies and concepts he creates unfold a potential as active participants in a transformative musical practice.
Micro Breaths of a Blue Lung engages with the vocal, percussive, and resonant dimensions of large marine mammals. The piece, a large 45-minute architecture composed of numerous miniatures, is an investigation into the timbral characteristics of cetaceans sounds which echo back within his instrumental devices.
During the concert the instruments are brought to life in interaction with the performers, but they can also be approached at times before and after the concert as stand-alone objects, unfolding an independent sonic existence.

Programme
Fabio Machiavelli, Micro Breath of a Blue Lung (2026)

Artists
Fabio Machiavelli, compositie & live electronics

Ictus:
Maris Pajuste, voice
Eva Reiter, Tom De Cock: sound devices
Alexandre Fostier, sound    

Same concert at 17:15