Francesco Cavaliere and Tomoko Sauvage embody a tactile audio visual display, radiating the colour green into sounds and painting meditative music. By transforming collected objects into invented instruments and scenography, each motif becomes a dedication to a specific situation, an anecdote or a symbol, sometimes real and other times absurd, that the artists have encountered through their travels and conversations: the Chinese myth about a man wearing a green hat, the naming convention of Japanese traffic lights, or even the imaginary chants of frolicking twin dolphins. This inspired the duo’s personal research on experimenting with raw and synthesized idiophones, stage landscape design, spontaneous field recording and organized improvisation.

For their installation and performance, Cavaliere and Sauvage assemble a green cabinet of curiosities - an instrumentarium combining water, glass, clay, bamboo xylophones, metallophones and synthesizers. Tomoko describes in an interview: “When you are actually surrounded by green musical instruments, it has a calming effect as if you were looking at a forest or mountain.” Surrounding themselves with amulets and fluorescent fluids, the duo transcend into a musical imagination that connects scores, choreography and sculpture. Motions like crisscrossing the stage, feeling the presence of a perfectly plump leaf as it strikes a glass bowl, minerals slipping through fingers, all resonate to the soothing sounds of splashing water. There’s an intuitive yet methodical nature to this conceptual approach to composition reminiscent of the fluxus art movement. The pair’s initial motif was to play Henning Christiansen’s Green Music, whose score turned out to be nonexistent. By then, their green dream was already flourishing in their mind, retracing the path of so-called environmental music from Walter Tilgner and Knud Viktor to the likes of Kankyo-Ongaku and Hiroshi Yoshimura.

Since there is a strong visual element to their work, witnessing this captivating site specific performance may be imperative in understanding the range and influence of the colour green and the impact on the sounds they create together. On ‘Viridescens’, the first release by Cavaliere and Sauvage, we are invited to experience these recordings in a more musical context. Acting like an intermediary, the duo transport us to their special planet, enlivened by animal voices, wind, and aquatic creatures dancing across a luminous aurora.

Tracks A1, B1 and B2 were recorded by
Pratik Dasgupta at the Empty Gallery, Hong Kong in 2017.
Track A3 was initially composed for the installation work
≒ AO presented as part of the festival Infra, Tokyo in 2017.
Special thanks to the Empty Gallery, Hong Kong;
Q-O2, Brussels; Yuri Landman (electric xylophones)

Composed and arranged by
Francesco Cavaliere and Tomoko Sauvage
Mastered and cut by Noel Summerville
Artwork by Benjamin Kilchhofer