The concert to travel for between Thursday 15 and Sunday 18 October is Brussels Philharmonic’s Friday encounter with Ilan Volkov at deSingel. Its title, Orchestrating Resistance, could invite oversized symbolism; the substance lies in a sharply assembled programme of four works, each asking listeners to reconsider the social histories held inside orchestral sound. This is the opening event of Shifting Sounds, deSingel’s festival of voices of resistance, and it gives the weekend a strong centre of gravity: a full-scale orchestra addressing contemporary music as a present-tense practice, with friction, space and consequence built into the material.[1][4]

Volkov is Brussels Philharmonic’s principal guest conductor, and his work with the orchestra has consistently made room for composers whose ideas disrupt inherited concert habits. For this programme he conducts Raven Chacon’s Inscription, Tyshawn Sorey’s Adagio (for Wadada Leo Smith), Annea Lockwood’s Saouah! and George Lewis’s Weathering. The Flemish Radio Choir joins Brussels Philharmonic, while David Kweksilber appears on alto saxophone. That combination matters: the programme moves across score, voice, breath, sustained instrumental colour and a saxophone line, giving the evening an unusually broad physical palette for a concert in the Red Hall.[1][2]

Lewis’s Weathering is a particularly useful way into the evening’s stakes. Written in 2023 for orchestra, it considers “weathering” as the ongoing strain produced by anti-Blackness, while its composer frames the piece as part of a search for new histories, subjectivities and identities in classical music. The work’s subject is direct, yet the programme offers no single aesthetic lane. Chacon’s Inscription works with silence and fragmentation; Sorey’s Adagio honours Wadada Leo Smith through patient duration; Lockwood’s Saouah! brings voices and gongs into a ritualised sound world. Together, these pieces make attentiveness feel like the concert’s real discipline.[1][3]

A festival opener with a specific charge

Shifting Sounds runs at deSingel from Friday 16 through Saturday 24 October and presents music and performance around forms of resistance. Starting the festival with this concert gives the headline a concrete musical meaning instead of leaving it at theme level. Volkov has described his work with Brussels Philharmonic as a place to explore, test and expose contemporary music alongside other artistic practices. His selection here is grounded in composers whose work connects musical form to questions of genre, heritage, sound art, improvisation and collective experience. The result is a case for orchestral programming that treats the canon as an active question.[2][4]

The strongest reason to go is the chance to hear these four works placed in relation to one another, inside a single 75-minute arc. That compact duration encourages concentration and gives the programme its own contour: Chacon’s charged quiet, Sorey’s slowed-down scale, Lockwood’s vocal and percussive resonance, then Lewis’s work on endurance and empathy. It is contemporary classical music with a clear editorial premise, though the night’s interest comes from the distinct languages of the pieces themselves. deSingel has listed the event as contemporary classical music, yet the personnel and repertoire suggest a roomier definition of what that category can contain.[1][3]

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Friday’s practical plan

Brussels Philharmonic and Ilan Volkov play Orchestrating Resistance at deSingel’s Rode zaal in Antwerp on Friday 16 October at 20:00. The listed running time is 75 minutes, with tickets priced from €10 to €35. Arrive with enough time to settle into the programme’s scale: this is a concentrated concert, built around listening across four very different compositional approaches. Check deSingel’s official event page before travelling for ticket availability, access information and any schedule changes.[1]

Sources

  1. Brussels Philharmonic / Ilan Volkov: Orchestrating Resistance — deSingel
  2. F/W26: Ilan Volkov — Brussels Philharmonic
  3. Weathering (2023) — Wise Music Classical
  4. Shifting Sounds: Voices of resistance — deSingel