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TICKETS
“With his upcoming album ‘Ranges of Robustness’ – which will be released on May 24 - composer Wim Mertens will go on tour this December. He will bring new and older work to Bozar (Brussels) on December 7. Tickets go on sale on Tuesday April 30 at 10am.
Wim Mertens is undoubtedly a man of many talents. As a composer, he has been at the absolute top of contemporary classical music for several decades. Besides being a singer, he is also an excellent pianist, guitarist, and violinist with more than 70 albums to his name. After the successful ‘Inescapable Tour’ with which he celebrated 40 years (1980 - 2020) of his career, followed by the equally open-armed ‘Voice of the Living Tour’ in 2023, an ode to the victims and soldiers of the First Great War. On his new record ‘Ranges of Robustness’ - which will be released on May 24 - Mertens is accompanied by his wind ensemble. Furthermore, he will bring songs like ‘Far’, ‘The Scene’ and the world-famous ‘Struggle For Pleasure’, as well as recent pieces like ‘Glossary Raisonné’, ‘On The Zephyrous Peak’ and ‘Sappho’.
Mertens took his first professional steps as a musicologist and radio producer but quickly grew into a unique, world-renowned composer who based his first release in 1980 - ‘For Amusement Only’ - solely around the sound of pinball machines. His minimalist but always strongly melodically based work, he presented immediately afterwards on ‘At Home-Not At Home’ (1981), ‘Vergessen’ (1982), ‘Struggle For Pleasure’ (1983) or ‘Maximising The Audience’ (1984), among others. His versatility as a composer writing for a variety of ensembles - from pure voice to symphony orchestra - could be heard on international stages in Europe, North and Central America, Japan or Thailand and was nicely summarised on the 2019 release of ‘Inescapable’, a limited-edition box set summarising his four-decade career. The theatre and film world (e.g. Peter Greenaway’s 1986 ‘The Belly of an Architect’) also finds in Mertens a faithful companion with a accessible spirit of innovation and experimentation that manifests itself both on record and on stage.”