Multiplicity

The sounds of Cities | MultipliCity is a musical exploration of the city as a place of multiplicity—of lives layered, voices entwined, memories clashing and harmonizing. As a vocal collective, polyphony is both our form and our metaphor: many voices sounding together, in concord and in dissonance. This program investigates the deep relationship between vocal polyphony and the development of urban life in northwestern continental Europe, from the rise of medieval towns to the Renaissance flowering of what is often called the Franco-Flemish school.

Inspired by Janequin’s radical gesture, we’ve collaborated with the Rotterdam-based interdisciplinary collective BrownOut. Composer Sophia Bardoutsou contributes The Cries of Rotterdam, a new work for voices that carries the tradition of Janequin, Gibbons, and Berio (The Cries of London) into our own time. With a practice rooted in collective identity and vocal experimentation, Bardoutsou’s work is a living archive of a city in flux. Alongside her, Zimbabwean composer Céleste Wright—whose expertise lies in screen scoring and soundscape design—walked the streets of Rotterdam to capture and remix its sound environment into a parallel composition. These two sonic works, created in collaboration with FONOS, form a contemporary diptych of Rotterdam in 2025.

In MultipliCity, we embrace our own multiplicity—as artists, as migrants, as urban inhabitants. FONOS and BrownOut are both based in Rotterdam, a city that was almost entirely destroyed by Nazi bombing in 1940. The concert’s premiere takes place in the Lambertuskerk, one of the rare buildings left standing, home to the historic Maarschalkerweerd organ, which celebrates its 125th anniversary this year. Organist Eric Koevoets will perform his Prelude and Fugue, a musical homage to the city’s enduring spirit.

MultipliCity is a journey through the urban soul, through its ruins and its rebirths, its divine proportions and its disordered voices. It is a polyphony of longing, survival, and the radical joy of living together.