Inspiration In My Favourite Café

Sunday, the 25th of January 2026 

#Mokafe #Brussels #Splash #SeaSymphony #BrusselsCathedral #GuntherVanDeven #LaurentFobelets #GalerieDuRoi #notebook #composing #gestation #orchestra #symphony

#violin #flute #brass  

I am in my favourite café in Brussels, Mokafe. It’s a wonderful old style café brasserie in the glorious Galerie du Roi, an indoor shopping arcade built in 1846. It has no background music so it is perfect for the gestation process in composing.  

I have just come from the singing mass at the Cathédrale des S. Michel et S. Gudule, a 13th century early Gothic masterpiece, perfect for our Gregorian chant sung by three of us – Gunther van Deven, Laurent Fobelets and myself. It is such a pleasure singing with such lovely people with such lovely voices in a beautiful old building. That was perfect inspiration for making sense of the sketches I made in my notebook yesterday (and during Mass this morning – sorry!).  

These sketches are for the second movement of the Sea Symphony – Splash – the vivid random splash of the ocean, yet with his own unseen rhythm. The structure of the movement has been rather hazy until now, when I wrote it in my notebook during a quiet time in mass. Now, I have the whole movement going round and round in my head, while enjoying a glass of house white wine.  

Wind alternate with pizzicato strings. High instrumentation alternates with low instrumentation. Brass interject randomly. High flutes and violins add that sparkle of light. And the surge of the ocean has an inevitability in the final coda, with the oscillating ‘diabolus in musica’ (augmented fourth) that heralds the final cadence. 

Here’s the lovely hubbub in Mokafe which is accompanying my musings. 

Sketching Splash in Mokafe.mp4