Passepartout Duo is a music group comprised of pianist Nicoletta Favari and percussionist Christopher Salvito. Making music that escapes categorization, the duo’s ongoing travel around the world informs the multi-disciplinary collaborations, instrumental compositions, and evocative music videos that constitute their body of work. Don't miss our conversation with Passepartout Duo, covering topics such as partnership, new album Argot, instruments, upcoming projects, and life.
How did you come up with the name Passepartout Duo, and what significance does it hold for you and your work? How did the two of you come together as Passepartout Duo? Was there a defining moment that solidified your creative partnership?
We were about to graduate as music students when we met at a summer festival fellowship in Maine in 2015. Finding ourselves to be on identical wavelengths in terms of creative itch, chamber music interests, and general ambitions, we started the duo within a month. We immediately applied to our first artist residency together, and started planning our first month-long tour too. Trying to organize opportunities that would put us closer geographically was key at the time, as Chris was based in the US, and Nico was based in Scotland. From there we kept playing together, primarily working through artist residencies and concert tours.
The name means to us a master key that opens this key that opens every door, so it’s maybe a sort of wish for our duo life and work to be able to access different places and different worlds where we can learn and share. For many years there was actually an art program on Italian television that Nico watched, and that was called Passepartout.
Traveling across various cultures must expose you to diverse sounds and traditions. How do you absorb these influences and translate them into your compositions?
Inspiration from travel is a bit like love, you definitely know it, but it is difficult to put it into a formula. Everywhere we go we are trying to learn about how music is kept alive in that place, in that scene, in that everyday life, and when something resonates with us we try to translate it to our life. Something that is immediate, something that takes even years. But we are often inspired by rhythms, by other musical instruments, and by the reactions that music provokes in the people from the audience.
Can you walk us through your creative process when composing a new piece? Are there any specific rituals or routines you follow when starting a new composition?
Analog circuits are a sort of language that we like to speak and that allows us to express sonically what we want in an easy way, which is not true for every technological tool, for example we are not comfortable with coding. But I think it’s also comforting to us that analog is more restrictive than digital; sometimes we get lost in the digital world where everything is possible.
Besides that, our mind is set up in a way that is always thinking of our music in a performative and visual way, so even when we compose we are imagining what would be happening on stage if, or when, the music would be performed, what kind of gesture, movement, atmosphere the performer would be representing. In this way we are usually trying to strike a balance between the electronics sound and everything else.
You've developed a unique ecosystem of handmade instruments. Could you walk us through your creative process when designing a new instrument, like the Chromaplane?
The instruments usually come from our specific needs as performers when we are preparing a new live set or composing new music, and even when we are at the very initial stage we are already trying to imagine what the instrument will look like at the end.
There is usually a designing and testing first phase, followed by the first prototype that we generally end up using for writing the music too, unless there are changes that really need to be made.
But the Chromaplane came about in a very specific way, as a revisitation of a sound & textiles installation of ours, and with the specific inspiration of making a sort of ‘electronic txalaparta’ (the txalaparta is a wooden instrument from the Basque Countries). And this is also the first instrument that we get to share with other people, thanks to a collaboration with the company KOMA Elektronik, so it will be interesting to see if it develops into new ideas from now on.
Your latest album Argot is out—can you tell us the inspiration behind it and what listeners can expect from this project?
Argot is a new album that has deep roots.
The original inspiration for it comes from our fascination with speech melody techniques, that we have encountered many times in contemporary classical compositions. One of our favorites is Peter Ablinger’s Voices and Piano series, but for example we also performed Poor Margie by Florent Ghys for a while. We find it very interesting to look for the border lines: the line between acoustic and electronic sounds, between music and technology, between instrumental and vocal, and so on. Because of our interest in musical instruments as agents and not only objects, we often speak of their voices. So in 2021 we got to work for the first time with a Buchla synthesiser during a residency in Krems, Austria. Because it is a synthesizer from 1964, it is a little bit whimsical, hard to control, but full of character. So we decided that we could write more gestural music, letting it speak in ‘sentences’. Next to the synth there was also a grand piano though, because both the instruments originally belonged to the composer Ernst Krenek. So we decided it would be an interesting idea to also use the piano. And that’s how our 2021 EP titled Epigrams was composed, but because it was such a short project we decided there was more to it that we could further explore. So flash forward to March 2023, when we had the chance of working in residence at the Elektronik Music Studios in Stockholm, to use their Serge synthesizer, which is interestingly different from the Buchla. And from there on, we recorded the piano part in February 2024 at the Gmea studio in France, and worked remotely with some friends to add guest appearances on other instruments that we thought really helped bring out the full character of certain tracks.
We love this album very much, because the music is ‘a little bit awkward’, we wrote but somehow we didn’t write it, because the synthesizer did a lot of the compositional work. It’s a joy to rediscover at every listen!
What new sounds, textures, or techniques did you explore in Argot that set it apart from your previous albums?
Most of our work is strongly characterized by melodic drive and clearly rhythmic skeletons, which is quite natural for us as we are originally a pianist and a percussionist. So we think what sets Argot apart the most is the combination of the melodic drive to a gestural approach, very unpredictable, which in fact dictates the melody and makes it feel erratic.
Besides that, we achieved many interesting textures because of the simple fact that we used these beautiful old analog synthesizers, and collaborating with the other instrumentalists on flute and string instruments was a way for us to support these details. We also used the inside of the piano in the track Kissing in the Park, Briefly.
Can you discuss any upcoming projects or collaborations that you're particularly excited about?
There are a couple of things that are waiting for us at the start of 2025, and that we are looking forward to. The first is the live show with Inoyama Land, presenting our project Radio Yugawara in London at the end of February. It’s only the second time that we perform live together, and it is the first time that Inoyama Land performs outside of Japan, so it will be a special occasion. And then we are also part of the organization of a month-long Sound Lab / Residency project in Tunis, and we are looking forward to working with all the participants and with our fellow mentor, Rami Harrabi.
Finally, from your perspective, what is the meaning of life?
The meaning of life is to look for the meaning! But how you look for the meaning makes a big difference, doesn’t it?