Through moments of her life and work abroad — from Palestine to Sierra Leone, passing through the Republic of Congo and Romania — Vera Cavallin offers a personal musical narrative shaped by years spent living and working in diverse cultural contexts. With great curiosity, she invites listeners to discover the sounds and songs she encountered along the way, not as a definitive portrait of these places, but as fragments of lived experience. Notes on the political and social context serve as a backdrop, offering reflections on how musical tastes and traditions are shaped within specific historical and cultural settings.

Vera Cavallin was born in Italy to a biologist father and a teacher mother. She studied piano and harp in Italy, and later pursued music composition in Belgium, where she now resides. Vera also holds a master’s degree in contemporary history and a certificate in cartography. As a harpist, she has performed across the globe in venues as varied as the Opera House in Dubai, Café Oto in London, the Sakakini Cultural Center in Ramallah, and the Rewire Festival in The Hague. Her musical interests range from old punk and late-Renaissance works to contemporary classical and experimental music, all deeply connected to her passion for recording the sounds of the natural world. Between 2022 and 2024, she worked at the Lesio-Louna Reserve in the Republic of Congo and later lived in the Sierra Leonean jungle, where she served as chief ranger at a rescue center for western chimpanzees. During this period, she collected a number of sound samples, an experience that led to the creation of her new project on disappearing sounds, Terrasonica. Vera is the founder and artistic director of the Brussels-based concert series S M O G.

Cocktail of the month: 2G