music by Frederic Rzewski, Coming Together / Attica
by 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)
and Tarek Halaby (narrator)
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Frederic Rzewski (1938–2021) created, with this 1975 diptych, one of the most powerful works for narrator in modern music. The piece is rooted in the Attica prison uprising (New York, 1971), where inmates demanded to be treated as human beings. The repression cost more than forty lives. Rzewski based the work on a letter by Sam Melville, one of the victims. In a sharp mix of exhaustion, resilience, and irony, he describes how self-discipline helps him reclaim his dignity. Over a modal bass line, Rzewski builds a strict structure based on the numbers 7 and 49. He ‘locks’ the text in place, while the music’s irrepressible energy pushes against those limits.
music by Fabio Machiavelli
by Fabio Machiavelli (live electronics), Maris Pajuste (voice), Eva Reiter (sound devices), Tom De Cock (sound devices), Alexandre Fostier (sound)
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“First we shape our tools and then they shape us.” – John M. Culkin
At the heart of Fabio Machiavelli’s work lies the idea of (re)formation. In recent years, his artistic practice has centred on new lutherie, DIY compositional practices, and the development of new instruments—much like many composers of his generation. Micro Breaths of a Blue Lung explores large marine mammals: their resonances, and their vocal and percussive dimensions. Machiavelli investigates their timbral qualities and lets them resonate through his instrumental devices. The work unfolds as a 45-minute sonic architecture built from a multitude of miniatures. During the performance, the instruments come to life through their interaction with the performers. Before and after, they can also be experienced as a sound installation, with each object inhabiting its own sonic world.
performance by Hoda Siahtiri and Shaahin Peymani
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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.
Baudouin Oosterlynck has been developing a singular artistic practice around sound, silence, and listening since the 70s. For the very first edition of Tectonics in Brussels, he brings together a selection of his remarkable listening instruments in Studio 3.
These are not conventional sound-producing instruments, but objects that shift the way we hear. They emerge from intriguing questions: what would the world sound like with differently shaped ears? How can the hidden sonic qualities of an object be revealed in silence? And how do form, space, and air influence our perception?
Instruments such as Prothesen, Étant-donnés, Ad Libitum, and Étui-donnés invite you to listen differently — more attentively, more slowly, and with an open ear for the unexpected.
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At the heart of Fabio Machiavelli’s work lies the idea of (re)formation. In recent years, his artistic practice has centred on new lutherie, DIY compositional practices, and the development of new instruments—much like many composers of his generation. Micro Breaths of a Blue Lung explores large marine mammals: their resonances, and their vocal and percussive dimensions. Machiavelli investigates their timbral qualities and lets them resonate through his instrumental devices. The work unfolds as a 45-minute sonic architecture built from a multitude of miniatures. During the performance, the instruments come to life through their interaction with the performers. Before and after, they can also be experienced as a sound installation, with each object inhabiting its own sonic world.
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Brussels Philharmonic commissioned young audio makers David Dubois, Alice Van Biesen and Livia Slegers to create new sound works for the Tectonics festival, inspired by the LAB-SERIES concerts.
Before, during, and after these concerts, they set out on a kind of ‘wild sonic foraging’, gathering voices, sounds, and textures—with both active and passive input from the audience. The result is three unique audio installations, presented in premiere at Tectonics.
Tectonics is a trailblazing festival for new and experimental music, launched in 2012 by conductor Ilan Volkov—a true musical omnivore, driven by insatiable curiosity and an eclectic ear.
Day #1 features: Ilan Volkov, Brussels Philharmonic, Ictus, Tarek Halaby, Faridou Amadou, Heather Leigh, Leonie Strecker, Pak Yan Lau, Anita Cappuccinelli, Baudouin Oosterlynck, Fabio Machiavelli.
Can you listen to a building? Symphony for Kunstnernes Hus by Norwegian composer Øyvind Torvund is a symphony that presents itself as a work of art – and a work of art that takes the form of a symphonic concert. It’s an immersive musical experience, with simultaneous concert moments unfolding throughout the building, inviting and challenging the audience to move freely through the spaces and fully dissolve into the music.
Tectonics is a trailblazing festival for new and experimental music, launched in 2012 by conductor Ilan Volkov—a true musical omnivore, driven by insatiable curiosity and an eclectic ear.
Day #2 features: Ilan Volkov, Brussels Philharmonic, Ictus, Vlaams Radiokoor, James Wood, Jennifer Torrence, Hoda Siahtiri, Shaahin Peymani, Baudouin Oosterlynck, Fabio Machiavelli.
experiment, chance, and live electronics: Maya Verlaak premieres her first concerto at Tectonics Festival
Music as social experiment - or as a reminder how to cry. On Saturday, two brand-new creations take the stage: Maya Verlaak and Cassandra Miller each composed a new work for the Brussels Philharmonic.
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’s intimate and engaging compositions take as their starting point existing melodies, which she variously deconstructs, loops, magnifies and utterly transforms.
a commission by Brussels Philharmonic: read the program note by Cassandra Milleron her new work
