The encounter
is the work.
Accordi di Pace does not produce concerts. It creates the conditions for a specific kind of human and musical meeting — then documents what happens when two exceptional musicians, given time and shared space, arrive somewhere neither could have reached alone.
How does the quality of musical listening change the possibility of human encounter across profound difference?
This is the question that Accordi di Pace has tested five times in Rome, and that shapes every operational decision the project makes. It is not a political question. It is not a therapeutic one. It is an artistic question — and the answer, if there is one, lives in the music.
The project creates conditions, not outcomes. Two musicians. Two musical languages. One shared space. Time. Food. Listening. Risk. One final improvisation whose result neither musician can predict in advance. What emerges belongs to both of them — and to no one else.
The institution exists to protect the simplicity of that meeting. The production, documentary, hospitality and institutional structures absorb complexity so that the artists do not have to.
How an encounter unfolds.
Each encounter follows the same arc, not as a rigid protocol, but as a working structure that protects the musical and human process. The steps are provisional. Each encounter revises them.
They enter as individuals, not representatives.
The musicians arrive at the same space, not as symbols of their culture or community, but as artists. The encounter begins before the first note. The first meal matters as much as the first rehearsal.
Each offers something of their own.
Each musician presents their instrument, their tradition, their repertoire - not as a performance, but as an offering. The other listens without judgement, without trying to respond too quickly.
Music, food, time and conversation create familiarity.
Shared meals. Walks. Silence. The domestic rhythm of the residency creates a human context in which musical risk becomes possible. Trust is not assumed — it is built, slowly, in small moments.
Repertoire becomes dialogue.
One musician enters the other's musical language. They play each other's pieces, imperfectly. They find common tunings, common rhythms, unexpected consonances. The musical conversation begins to have its own logic.
The structure opens. The outcome becomes uncertain.
The known repertoire falls away. The musicians begin to play without a score, testing ideas, following threads, allowing failure. This is where the encounter earns its name. Artistic failure is accepted. It is not corrected.
The final improvisation cannot be predicted.
The public concert culminates in a live improvisation that neither musician has rehearsed. The audience witnesses something genuinely unrepeatable. What was built over four or five days becomes, for the first time, visible.
What is fixed.
What remains open.
From recruitment to the echo — the full encounter timeline.
Preparation
Artist selection, private pre-call, expectations and consent. Production, hospitality and documentary preparation. The encounter is designed to be protected from the outset.
Arrival
Familiarisation, first meal, first musical contact. The encounter begins informally. No score. No agenda. Two people in the same room for the first time.
Exploration
Musical exchange deepens. Shared life, meals, walks, conversation, silence — creates the human conditions for musical risk. Documentary observation begins.
Performance
Public concert before a small witness audience. Final improvisation. What was built privately becomes visible once. The performance is recorded professionally.
The Echo
Reflection, documentary development, professional recording, archiving. The encounter continues to produce meaning long after the concert ends. Further artistic collaboration may emerge.
The same method.
More time.
The 2016 encounters tested this methodology in a concentrated format — four to five days of shared time in intimate venues across Rome. What they established is now being developed into its next stage: a longer residential period, professional documentary production, research collaboration, and a network of European institutional hosts.
The methodology does not change. The time, the documentation and the institutional structure around it grow to match the ambition.
Read the full residency proposal →