CrowdMate
The standout trip for Thursday through Sunday, October 1–4, is in Leuven: Clara Lévy, Victor Guaita and Clara de Asís bring Songs of Erosion to STUK on Thursday, October 1. The title suggests a process, and that is the useful way into this concert. The trio takes the Cantigas de Santa Maria, a vast 13th-century Spanish collection, as material whose contours have been weathered by time. Violin, viola, modular synthesizer and computer enter the picture as tools for tracing what remains, stretching and repeating fragments until their former shape begins to blur. This is a rare chance to hear an early-music source treated as living matter: close enough to retain its accumulated history, open enough to admit noise, pressure and contemporary sound.[1][2]
STUK presents the evening as part of its sound programme, a strand that places concerts beside sound-art activity and keeps experimental listening central to the house. That context matters. Songs of Erosion arrives with a precise internal tension between manuscript and circuitry, acoustic strings and electronics, a documented score and its unstable afterimage. Festival Musica, which presented the work in 2025, described the project as musical archaeology meeting experimentation; its listing identifies Lévy on violin, Guaita on viola and Clara de Asís on modular synthesizer and computer. In the STUK Labozaal, that compact instrumentation and the advertised surround-sound setting give the work a clear scale: detailed listening, close attention to timbre, then a widening of the room around it.[1][2][3]
A songbook viewed through its sediment
The Cantigas contain songs of praise alongside legends, historical episodes, remedies and courtly scenes. That breadth gives Songs of Erosion a much richer foundation than a museum-style reconstruction. Lévy, Guaita and de Asís approach the manuscript as an artefact with layers of use and damage, where melody can splinter, lengthen or circle back on itself. The result has the potential to sharpen the listener’s sense of duration: an old tune may surface as a grain of sound, a bowed line, a harmonic trace or an electronic residue. The central appeal lies in that movement between recognisable source and transformed texture. For audiences drawn to experimental composition, improvised detail and early music without fixed period boundaries, this is the week’s most singular proposition.[1][2]
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Rhodri Davies sets the grain of the evening
The programme begins at 20:00 with Welsh improviser, composer and artist Rhodri Davies; Songs of Erosion follows at 21:00. Davies will perform solo on the bray harp, an instrument associated with a buzzing, overtone-rich character. STUK also notes his work with standard, horsehair and electric harps, plus harp installations shaped by wind, water, ice or fire. Here, the bray harp establishes a direct bridge into the later trio set: an older instrument whose resonance already carries a rough, grainy edge. The pairing feels carefully assembled around material sound—string vibration, friction, harmonic bloom and the way a tone changes as it decays. It gives the whole evening a through-line beyond genre labels.[1][2]
Thursday, October 1: practical route
The concert takes place at STUK Labozaal, Naamsestraat 96 in Leuven, with doors open for a seated presentation. STUK lists the event for Thursday, October 1 at 20:00, and its event page currently marks it as sold out. Keep the date, starting time, access information and ticket status under review through the official STUK page before travelling, since live-event details can change. If a place becomes available, arrive ready for a full two-part listening session: Davies first, then Lévy, Guaita and de Asís carrying an eight-century-old repertory into a vivid, unsettled present.[1][3]
Sources
- Clara Lévy, Victor Guaita & Clara de Asís — Songs Of Erosion / Rhodri Davies — STUK
- Songs of erosion — Festival Musica
- Sound — STUK