I was profoundly shocked by the terrorist attacks in Paris against the journalists of Charlie Hebdo and against the Jewish supermarket Hyper Casher in January 2015. But the extreme barbarity of the Islamist attacks on November 13 went even one step further, becoming the worst massacre in France since wartime. I happened to be in artist residency in Paris on both occasions. Driving back to Brussels on November 14, after the cancellation of the performance we were meant to give in Paris on that evening, I felt the need to say something about it. Back in the studio, I reconsidered the creation I had planned for the LOOP festival in Brussels and composed this tribute to the hundreds of victims and relatives hit by this fanatical religious madness. It uses a wide variety of sounds, many gathered beforehand: field recordings, special playing techniques on the viola, granulation of the beginning of the second movement of Beethoven's 7th Symphony, analog synthesizers as well as news reports and interviews on radio and television following the November 13 attacks. I was intensely touched by the witnesses of those who were trapped in the concert hall Bataclan, who had to hide or play dead under corpses in order to survive, endless minutes of fear with little hope to escape the barbarian murderers, calmly executing people lying on the ground, with automatic weapons, before exploding themselves amongst the survivors. And sharing the desperation of those who lost loved ones. Though this work came as a reaction to the Paris attacks, I choose not to name the city in the title, in tribute to the many other cities hit in the past by the same fanatical ideology. And to the many cities that followed, including Brussels, my home town, where three Islamists exploded themselves on March 22, 2016, assassinating and maiming hundreds, amongst them, a friend of mine, murdered in the metro. This work is dedicated to all the victims of blind religious violence, their friends and relatives, wherever they live or died. “Requiem for a City”, composed at ARTeM studio, could not be created as planned during the LOOP Festival in November 2015. Because of maximum terrorist threat, the festival was cancelled by city authorities. This work will be created at the LOOP concert on September 19, 2016, in Brussels.