This season we exuberantly celebrate artists’ fascination for nature’s wealth of shape, colour and sound. We have Masterpiece Weeks, for instance, built around Haydn’s Die Schöpfung, Mahler's Symphony No. 3 and Debussy's La mer. In the series Birdsong we bring together compositions in which that delightful tweeting, trilling and cooing dictates the melodies. The animal kingdom holds up a mirror to us humans because – as our Animal Fable Happening will prove – animals are just like people. And the third edition of Beat it! brings us percussion produced using a wide variety of materials: water, wood, glass, skin, textiles, metal...
Nature is often mankind’s muse. Sadly, she is also often mankind’s victim. Many artists will therefore be sounding a critical note during the coming season. With our Let it bee! Project, a collaboration with the City of Bruges, we – and hopefully you too – will already be doing a little something to improve the lot of bees, those buzzing little engines of biodiversity enrichment.