Double bill: Adia Vanheerentals / Suzan Peeters

Timing:

7.45 p.m.: the living room is open
8.30 p.m.: Adia Vanheerentals
9.30 p.m.: Suzan Peeters

Adia Vanheerentals - Taking Place

A solo album that is actually a duo. Not with a second musician, but with a place. That was saxophonist Adia Vanheerentals' starting point for her second solo release, which appeared on 21 November 2025 on Relative Pitch Records.

For her first solo album, entitled “Here Are 5 Reasons To Meditate”, Adia recorded five pieces that are intimate, calm, wild and melodic at the same time. The album was released as a single-sided LP by Dennis Tyfus' label Ultra Eczema in 2024. In the same year, Adia was selected as one of Klara's Twintigers, a platform for the most promising young musicians in Belgium. When she was asked by the New York label Relative Pitch Records to record a second solo album, Adia set out to find a creative way to reinvent her solo saxophone music. She recorded inventive improvisations that not only make use of the full range of her instrument and various playing techniques, but also of the ambient sounds in the unusual locations where she recorded the music – the echo of a silo, the clucking of a chicken coop or passing cars. These sounds inspired the music, creating a dialogue with the environment.

‘I was born in a city (Antwerp), so my thoughts immediately turned to locations with a lot of traffic, because nothing calms me more than the sound of a passing tram. Because it was spring, the sounds of birds desperately searching for a mate were very audible in the city, so I also chose places where the sounds of nature were present,’ says Adia Vanheerentals.

Adia Vanheerentals' new solo album is called “Taking Place” and was released on 21 November 2025 by Relative Pitch Records.

Photo © Dave Van Laere

Suzan Peeters

Suzan Peeters (°1999) is a Belgian accordionist, composer and experimental musician. She is constantly searching for new timbres and sound textures within the accordion and explores the boundaries of the acoustic spectrum by manipulating the interplay between her body and that of her instrument. She studied classical accordion at KASK & Conservatory in Ghent and at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen. She also studied Live Electronics at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels.

On 10 October, the Brussels-based accordionist released her debut album Cassotto on the Belgian label Blickwinkel. With Cassotto, she opens the door to a hidden sound chamber. The title refers to the cassotto: a small resonance chamber in the accordion that makes the sound warmer, softer and deeper. Listening to this album feels like stepping into that space yourself, enveloped by a world where intimacy and grandeur meet.

Although this is her first release, Peeters is already recognised as one of the most promising names on the Belgian experimental music scene. Her distinctive live concerts — from leading venues in Belgium to a sold-out Café Oto in London — have earned her a strong reputation. She is known for her unique combination of accordion, electronics and unusual objects, such as a massage board, which together form a surprising and coherent whole. Cassotto translates this approach into album form: as direct and compelling as her live work, but embedded in the intimate space evoked by the title.

Although the cassotto chamber naturally gives the accordion a velvety, warm sound, Peeters uses that softness to explore extremes — from subtle details to powerful, sweeping gestures that fill the space. The album thus moves between acoustic and electronic, tender and abrasive, static and dynamic, traditional and experimental. With Cassotto, Suzan Peeters presents a debut that places the accordion at the centre of an adventurous, contemporary soundscape — an invitation to discover how far the instrument can reach when tradition and imagination merge.

Photographer - Femke Appeltans

Styling - Edgar Van den Heede

Make-up - Maria Visser