Rafael Toral / L’oriole

• L’oriole

L’oriole is the duo of Clara Levy (violin) and Stéphane Clor (violoncello piccolo). They mix the string colors from the violin and cello with a timbral mechanism made of ‘transducers’ – little speakers – set on sounding bodies. The sound of the acoustic instruments vibrates through different materials, offering new possibilities of colors and textures drawn from these suspended resonators. Eerie and acute, the music thus flutters in long contemplative flights and sometimes condensate in clouds of screams and raw materials.

• Rafael Toral

Rafael Toral is a Portuguese guitarist and composer who has been active since the 1990s. But Spectral Evolution is, without a doubt, his magnum opus. Presented to the world after long years of solitary labour, the album manages to marry the two opposite sides of his sound palette. On one hand, the warm, lush and pensive guitar drones that characterised his early releases; on the other, the fizzy and precisely alien bleeps coming out of his arsenal of homemade electronic instruments, patiently crafted throughout his Space Program. Designed as a kind of garden inhabited by a "chaotic mess of weeds" that seem like they're organically growing out of the "harmonic ground" of guitar chords, the album successfully conveys the complexity and deep mystery of a living ecosystem. Despite being an ambitious summary of Toral's oeuvre, Spectral Evolution is nonetheless first and foremost a visceral and transformative experience, engulfing the listener into its warm embrace. Toral will perform this magistral album for the first time live in Belgium.

About Ekumen

Ekumen is a series of concerts in and around Brussels. Going beyond genre boundaries, they invite curious ears to discover tender and sensitive sounds.