With more than 70 albums released, numerous compositions for cinema, television and theatre — among which the soundtrack for The Belly of an Architect, by Peter Greenaway, stands out — and landmark works such as Struggle for Pleasure and Maximizing the Audience, Wim Mertens is one of the central figures of European artistic creation and a worldwide reference in contemporary classical music.

A composer, pianist and vocalist with a singular timbre — an immediately recognisable countertenor — Mertens became renowned for a minimalist and avant-garde approach to composition, in which emotion and structural precision mutually reinforce one another. This language continues to evolve in As Water Is to Fish (2025), a repertoire he presents at the Centro Cultural Vila Flor, alongside Ranges of Robustness (2024) and a selection of some of his best-known pieces, in a unique and unprecedented concert, accompanied by the Ensemble of the Guimarães Orchestra.

His music — hypnotic, luminous and of subtle intensity — is a singular live experience, reaffirming the reputation of a creator capable, like few others, of making audible the breathing of silence.