Renaud Crols @ Royal ice cellars - Hide & Seek Festival

Get ready to descend a long flight of stairs, until the temperature cools down a bit. Rest assured, it won’t become icy. In August it may even feel agreeable. During the XIX century, this ancient ice palace was used to store ice cubes for coffee houses, breweries, lemonade factories and ice-cream parlours. With the arrival of gas refrigerators these cellars were forgotten, until they were brought to mind again and were classified as a historic building in 1933. Though they have been renovated, they haven’t, up to now, been put to a permanent use. We, at Muziekpublique, find music a beautiful reconversion for such a space.

Which is the reason we decided to invite an artist capable of bringing this place to life, to make its walls vibrate and to increase your goose bumps. Renaud Crols is a mischievous, inventive and unconventional violinist. Very anchored in the Balkan repertoire, which he practices in groups such as Les Violons de Bruxelles and Taraf de Haïdouks, he’s also been traveling in other directions for years, allowing himself incursions into Indian, Brazilian or Celtic music, when he isn’t busy decorticating Bach. However, here we’ve put him in a bit of danger. We asked him to create an original, free and whimsical repertoire based on improvisation, one of his strong points. Armed with his violin and his voice, he will base himself on what he’s picked up along the musical routes in order to surprise you and to lead you to a new, unknown world.