The famous Belgian composer and pianist Wim Mertens performs in Zaragoza and Madrid on Monday and Tuesday, respectively.

The famous Belgian composer and pianist Wim Mertens will perform these coming Monday and Tuesday in Spain, at the Teatro Principal in Zaragoza (May 22) and the Teatro La Latina in Madrid (May 23), as part of the presentation tour of his sixty-seventh album, Voice of the Living, released on April 21. In these concerts, Mertens (piano and voice) will be accompanied by a quartet of musicians who will play various wind instruments: saxophone, trumpet, cornet, French horn, Wagner tuba and trombone).

Voice of the Living refers to the memories and experiences of soldiers and victims of war, which can only be evoked and sung by the living. Mertens composed the work ten years ago at the request of the Federal Public Service of the Chancellery of the Belgian Prime Minister, to be part of the commemoration of the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War. The live premiere of the work took place on October 28, 2014 in St Martin’s Cathedral, in the Flemish town of Ypres (Ieper in Dutch), which almost a hundred years ago was a battlefield, during the so called Great War, of five bloody military combats that occurred between December 1914 and August 1918.