Research shows that birds in the city sing louder than in nature. That finding could just as easily have been a note in one of Olivier Messiaen’s notebooks. For hours, he would lie stretched out in the grass, listening to their chirping. During long walks in the forest, he meticulously notated their melodies. Messiaen also wanted to capture the surrounding environment in sound—for instance, how the canopy carries sound depending on how dense or open it is. The spectral composer Tristan Murail once said: “Messiaen likes to ‘color in’ the passing of time.” In Oiseaux Exotiques, you can take that quite literally. According to Messiaen himself, he translates the bright colors of exotic birds from around the world into swirling rainbows of music.

In Talisker, premiered in Antwerp Central Station for Antwerp 93, it is the resonant architecture of the railway cathedral that inspired the composer. Ideally, Luc Brewaeys would have loved to hurl a metal trash can from the roof’s rafters to the ground—just to marvel at the prolonged echoes. Instead, five soloists, a percussion ensemble, and an extensive clarinet choir engage in a fascinating play with the acoustics of the concert space (including crashing cymbals). The resulting sound world is so rich that, as a listener, you’re sometimes unsure of what you’re actually hearing. The clarinets pick up the sound of the metal percussion instruments, and vice versa, stretching the echo further and making it more expansive. Brewaeys also invented new sound phenomena. As a spectralist, he colors his tones with so-called multiphonics, allowing the overtones of a sound to shimmer audibly. Unusual instruments like a whirly tube are no exception, nor are extended playing techniques. Brewaeys’ musical imagination seems inexhaustible. Perhaps the divine drink referenced in the title had something to do with it?

Chirping birds against a colorful sky, an exceptional glass of whisky—one thing and another leads us to Scotland. Composer Genevieve Murphy was born there. Not on the wild Isle of Skye (home of the smoky whisky Talisker), but on the east coast, in Dundee. Her brand-new work The Angel’s Share travels from the lowlands to the highlands, paying tribute along the way to the unspoiled natural beauty of her grandmother’s homeland. A 300-mile hike in five minutes for brass and percussion.

What does it mean to be human in a world where other forms of intelligence also exist? Audiovisual artist and composer Zeno van den Broek poses this question at a time when artificial intelligence is evolving at lightning speed. His latest work, Ways of [ ], is more urgent than ever.

In Ways of [ ], Van den Broek brings humans and machines together in a single musical and visual experience. He composed the piece for two innovative music ensembles – HIIIT and Percussions de Strasbourg – as well as for four digital “musicians”: self-playing percussion machines that perform autonomously while also responding live to the human percussionists. To musically train these digital entities, Van den Broek fed their algorithms with rhythms from industrial history: think steam engines, looms, and other mechanical systems. In this way, the digital players learn – just like humans – from their predecessors and from their musical environment.

Ways of [ ] is an audiovisual composition that feels like the emergence of a new kind of shared intelligence. You see and hear the digital and human musicians gradually learning to understand each other: hesitant at first, then increasingly fluid. In three largely improvised sections, the players discover their own voice and eventually find a shared musical language.

With Ways of [ ], Van den Broek invites the audience to reflect on what intelligence truly is – and what it means to be human.