30.03.26, 20:00, Raphaël Feuillâtre, Bach, Piazzolla, Albéniz

One of the most idiosyncratic bands in the southern hemisphere, The Necks, is coming to Ghent. The Australian trio has spent eighteen albums working on its unique sound. Their long, deceptively simple songs have always been their trademark, but on their latest album, Chris Abrahams (piano), Tony Buck (drums) and Lloyd Swanton (bass) seem to have suspended time completely. The mesmerising atmosphere they create is weightless and timeless.

Add to that the Brussels trio Going (João Lobo, Giovanni Di Domenico and Pak Yan Lau), as well as Japanese drummer Tatsuhisa Yamamoto, and the result is a heady mix. The occasional quartet with double drums guarantees rhythmic fireworks. Pak Yan Lau from Going will open the evening by engaging in a musical dialogue with the GAME ensemble.

Anna Alvizou and Timothy Veryser present a concert featuring music by Schubert, Copland, Wolf and Barber. Although Veryser discovered his passion for music at an early age, he only chose to attend the Conservatory of Ghent after completing his studies in Global Business Management, where he studied with Cristiane Stotijn and Hendrickje Van Kerckhove. Since graduating, Veryser has performed as a highly regarded tenor in many European opera houses, regularly appearing in productions by La Monnaie and Opera Ballet Vlaanderen.

He joins forces with Anna Alvizou, a dedicated song accompanist. She trained at the Musikhochschule in Trossingen and the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp, among others. She also works as a researcher with Prof. Kathleen Gyssels at the University of Antwerp.

The young Italian Mattia Fusi is one of the most interesting pianists of his generation. Having studied in Trieste and Cologne, he has won numerous prizes. He has a particular fondness for contemporary compositions and is dedicated to reviving the music of Giampaolo Coral. However, Bach also plays a central role in his career. He has chosen the third and fourth partitas, each of which consists of seven movements often inspired by dance. Surprisingly, he concludes with Samuel Barber’s piano sonata. Composed partly during Barber’s time in Rome, this post-war work was premiered by Vladimir Horowitz in 1949 and was an instant success. Considered one of Barber’s most important works, it is a cornerstone of 20^th-century American classical music.

We cannot imagine a better interpreter of Schubert’s music than the Alinde Quartet — they even named themselves after one of his compositions! A few years ago, the quartet embarked on an ambitious project to record all of Schubert’s string quartet works between 2020 and 2028, the 200th anniversary of his death. So far, they have released four albums, with the latest appearing in autumn 2025. Their balanced, warm performances have received widespread critical acclaim, but judge for yourself. The Alinde Quartet performs Schubert’s youthful Overture and his dramatic Fifteenth String Quartet, written half a lifetime later. They complement these pieces with works by the Rotterdam-born composer John Borstlap and Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck’s Miserere mei.

Igor Stravinsky wrote the music for the ballet Petrushka in 1911 and later arranged it for orchestra. The story bears some resemblance to Pinocchio: a puppet comes to life and develops its own emotional world.

This four-handed performance features no dancing or orchestra but two excellent pianists: Emmy Wils and Piet Kuijken. The former was once the latter’s student, and now they sit together at the keyboard, pulling the strings of Petrushka and the other fairground puppets.

Opposite them sit the piano duo Croene and Cornelis. They perform Petrushka in their own unique way, questioning the balance of power: who is playing whom? Who follows and who leads? Is playing four-handed on one piano as symbiotic as it seems?

Double bill with TLF Trio, mixing improvisation, sampling and electronic beats with classical chamber music, minimalism, pop and house; and the mysterious Dylan Henner with his characteristic use of ambient-tinged synths, marimba, digital choir and processed voice.

TLF Trio
TLF Trio is an experimental music ensemble consisting of cellist Cæcilie Trier, pianist Jakob Littauer and guitarist MK Velsorf.They released their first album, Sweet Harmony, on the French electronic and experimental label Latency in 2022 and an EP, New Songs & Variations, with new material and reworks by German techno pioneer Moritz von Oswald on Latency in 2023. 2025 saw their sophomore full-length album, Desire, come out via 15 love on September 4.

Dylan Henner
Dylan Henner remains a somewhat mysterious figure within the ambient scene. Since his debut in 2020 — via cassette releases on labels such as Phantom Limb, Dauw and AD93 — he has mainly let his music do the talking. He avoids public promotion, but his disarmingly poetic titles betray a sharp imagination. His debut album, The Invention of the Human, explores big questions about humanity, civilisation and technology. In the follow-up, You Always Will Be (2022), Henner sketches the entire course of life, from birth to death. His latest work, Star Dream FM, is an experimental ambient album peppered with choral singing that sounds like a mysterious radio broadcast full of childhood memories.

GAME (Rodrigo Evangelista, Siyi Xia)
Rodrigo Evangelista (piano) and Siyi Xia (violin) will set the evening in motion with Philip Glass's Sonata for violin and piano. Glass, a key figure in minimalism, pioneered a style based on repetition, steady rhythms, and gradual transformation. His music evolves slowly, allowing subtle changes to hold significant meaning. The piece was finished in 2008, and was commissioned by retired architect Martin Murray to commemorate the 70th birthday of his wife, Lucy Miller Murray. The piece follows three movements. It has a rhythmic pulse and transparent textures that reveal a lyrical, expressive side. The dialogue between violin and piano creates an evolving sound world, where subtle changes shape continuous motion and emotional depth.

How should you approach an instrument for which an enormous repertoire already exists? This was the starting point for some of the composers featured in Brecht Valckenaers’s latest project. In his Musica Ricercata, a collection of eleven short pieces, György Ligeti experiments with simple structures, rhythms, and sounds. Starting with just two notes, he adds one more for each new piece until eventually all the notes from the twelve-tone series have been heard. His aim was to step out of Bartók’s shadow. However, he never quite managed to break free.

Valckenaers combines this Ligeti piece with works by Lachenmann, Cowell, Kurtág, Crumb and Bartók, as well as adding a few of his own compositions.

Ligeti and his contemporaries are presented in true relay style, blurring the boundaries between the composers.

During this project week, singing and instrumental students from the classical music department collaborate with their peers from other programmes. Together, they will create their own version of Rameau’s opera Pigmalion. The story of Pigmalion, the sculptor from Greek mythology who fell in love with the marble statue he carved, has often been a source of inspiration in music and literature, perhaps most famously in the musical My Fair Lady. Rameau wrote his one-act opera some two hundred years earlier.

You can discover whether the students will fall in love with their own creation this week, just like Pigmalion, during one of the performances on Saturday and Sunday. Conductor Bart Naessens is in charge of the musical direction. Marijke Pinoy is responsible for the direction.

Credits:

• Pigmalion: Vahe Harutyunyan, Aixin Zhu
• La Statue: Elise Marmad
• Céphise: Réka Gacs
• L'Amour: Xiaoxi Zhan
• Hébé: Joy Gonnissen
• Fatime: Marjolein Acke, Yifei Cai
• Nérine: Rongye Pu
• Lesbacchantes: Lisanne Van der Steeg, Marlies Van Oost, Roos verschooten,
  Eleanor McMullan, Joren Basyn, Mateo Coltura, Leo Vanderstraeten,
• orchestra: Zhuoyu Xu, Alessandro Arieti, Pasquale Picone, Jeong Yun Lee, Ludovica Mastrostefano, Isabel Martín Grilo, Erza Mehmeti, Carmen Pérez Bartivas, Marta Boschis, Arne Somers, Esteve Ticó Rodriguez, Chensong Sun, Zoé Balon, Esther Fernández González, Jiongling Zhao, Guillermo Garcia Trueba, Rocio Gonzales, Ella Baert, El Gevers, Xander Monteyne, Wannes Van de Velde, Arne Van Handenhoven
  
• production: Janne Vanhaecke, Merlijn Willems, Chloé Van den Hende, Donna Kok, Junior Nicolau Vita, Emma Van Bogaert, Rob Lelièvre, Julian Oswiecinski, Clémence Ledent, Marianne Van Caekenberghe

KASK & Conservatorium’s wind orchestra, conducted by Michel Tilkin, will perform a programme featuring Messiaen’s Oiseaux Exotiques and Otto Ketting’s Time Machine. This piece for woodwind and percussion was written in 1972 for the Netherlands Wind Ensemble. The concert will conclude with Modest Mussorgsky’s world-famous Pictures at an Exhibition.

The students from the advanced master in contemporary music will present the results of a week-long workshop led by the multidisciplinary musician Sarah Wéry. The instrumental music, storytelling and sound installations may well blend together organically.