BIOGRAPHY
The classic contemporary Belgian composer Wim Mertens is an international recording and performing artist who has given countless concerts as a soloist and with his ensemble.
His early landmark albums include At home – Not at home (1980), Vergessen (1981) and Struggle for Pleasure (1982), which features Close Cover, still one of his classics.
The 1985 album Maximizing the Audience, saw the introduction of vocals in Mertens’ music, an element that has grown on later albums. Mertens sings in a high-pitched voice, using a language of his own invention. Over the years, he has released albums for various ensembles, including the Brussels Philharmonic and a group of 17 musicians, all women, for the album Receptacle.
Since 1980, Mertens has composed pieces in different formats, from short, accessible songs or Lieder to magnanimous and complex three- and four-part cycles. Settings have included solo piano to chamber music ensembles and symphony orchestra. He often writes for unusual instrumentations: twelve piccolos, ten bass trombones, thirteen clarinets.
Since his recording debut in 1980, titled For Amusement Only, an electronic composition for pinball machines, Wim Mertens has released more than 70 albums.
More recent projects include the triptych Cran aux Oeufs (2015-2016), That Which Is Not (2018), Inescapable (1980-2020), a 4-CD 40th Anniversary Box set compilation released in 2019 and The Gaze of the West (2020).
His latest album Heroides, a double CD, was released in February 2022.