What attracted you to Lahiri's poems, and how does that connect with your own life?

I don't know Jhumpa personally, but there is an indirect connection. Like me, she has lived all over the world, and that theme – the traces of previous inhabitants, the way a place influences you – resonates strongly with me. Sometimes we musicians live more in hotels than anywhere else, and I find that feeling of temporary homelessness, of energies lingering in a space, fascinating. Lahiri writes about it as if she were putting my own experiences into words. Her poems are not only about loneliness in nature, but also about isolation in the city, surrounded by people and stimuli. I sometimes feel that more powerfully in cities than in the countryside – that aloneness in the middle of the crowd, where everyone escapes into their phones to avoid the overload of information. That's a paradox of our time, and it's also in the music.

What was your starting point for this work?

I was looking for a musical translation of Lahiri's words. Just as she says that you become a better writer by translating, I learn by listening and improvising. In this piece, I ask myself: how does language – Italian or English – influence the rhythm, the expression, and even the physical sound of the music? Lahiri learned Italian from scratch in order to express herself in a new way, and she translates her own work back into English. That literal and figurative translation interests me, like when the violin and I play the same melody, but with a completely different character. That's what text does to music: it changes the expression, just as a translation lends a new layer to a poem.

Why did you choose Cristina Zavalloni, and what does she specifically bring to this project?

I know Cristina through the work of Fabrizio Cassol and the operas of Louis Andriessen. She is a truly complete musician, treading the line between jazz, improvised music and modern classical. Because of her range, I deliberately chose moments where she sings at the edge of her voice – I want not only beauty, but also an edge, something that is alive. We started playing with that in this work. Coincidentally, Cristina already had a connection with Lahiri; they know each other from Rome. We chose the lyrics together, which was a very enjoyable and enriching process. I let her voice weave through the lyrics and music, just like my saxophone.

The instrumentation is remarkably high in terms of registers. What was the reason for that?

I was looking for instruments in the same register precisely because of the texture. That's how I ended up with cornett, oboe, violins, soprano saxophone and mezzo-soprano voice. Double bass and low percussion fill the bass space without making it heavy. Transparency is important for improvisation, and I wanted a rich yet light sound.

Surprisingly, the evening begins with Purcell. What does that choice mean to you?

Purcell contrasts with my own counterpoint, but also acts as a mirror. Think of it as an overture: I improvise a bridge from Purcell's language to mine. But I don't want the audience to look too hard for references – it's about the atmosphere, the sound that is created. The saxophone and the voice emerge from that atmosphere and really set the work in motion.

Can you tell us something about how the different poems have been developed musically?

Each poem has been given its own character. In Poem for Ploughshares, the opening poem of the collection, I first introduce a theme with saxophone and voice, which is then developed by the orchestra. Then we get into a very lively section, on top of which you hear the poetry. There’s a lot of variation possible here; I wrote things down that don't necessarily have to be played in that way.

Davanzale (‘window sill’) begins very slowly, with long chords. And then – think Puccini meets Joni Mitchell – we move into jazz harmonies, a saxophone solo, minimalist structures, and rhythmic changes, to an almost Thelonious Monk-like adventure. The work plays with ternary and binary rhythms in the percussion and saxophone. In that sense, it’s about a rhythmic counterpoint: the European four-four feel versus the African twelve-eight feel, which are juxtaposed. You can hear this most clearly in the unison passages between the saxophone, oboe, and cornett. It’s as if a baroque orchestra suddenly starts speaking jazz – or vice versa.

Cupboard, in English, slows down the rhythm. There’s an underlying tension, the poetry is close to the skin, which is reflected in ostinatos and somewhat uncomfortable harmonies. For me, it’s a highly charged poem, about how you can be in a new place.

Then comes Obiettivo in two parts, two versions of the same poem: first rhythmic and almost hip-hop-like, spoken word, with violins responding to the text, then slower and more meditative, with arpeggios in the strings. It’s a dialogue between rhythm and silence.

After Interlude, the finale brings together all the influences you have already heard in different ways. I set the same poem to music twice: Ad Alberto de Lacerda, first spoken in English, then sung in Italian. No grand apotheosis, but a slow extinction, with a very fragile passage towards the end in the voice, where suddenly the blues comes to the fore. As if you are left alone with the echoes of the stories.