That is difficult to quantify. Perhaps the strongest influence for me is cooking…passion, in music as in cooking, for a certain “clarity”: I like things that are not excessively elaborate and are intelligible, where ingredients like harmony or orchestration can be identified effortlessly. Also in a melodic imagination I think there is a lot of Italian influence and again, I discern a certain Mediterranean approach to simplicity.

I really liked the idea of a journey that occurs in reverse, of something simple that you achieve starting with the naturalness of a gesture – that of putting on a blazer or of drawing with a pencil on a piece of paper – but that everything is accomplished through a more complex and multi-faceted phase. As in cinema, music begins with a very simple idea and returns to simplicity by moving through more elaborate rhythms and fragmentations.

I believe the idea of fluidity is essential: you arrive at a finished product with effort, but this effort is invisible. Everything that follows is unified, even though it is made of many parts, ideas, process, weaving, colors, shapes and lines. Everything must come together in a single object without betraying the effort that lies behind it.

Classicism for me represents the desire to give shape to certain kinds of abstract ideas: it is a breath of life to structure and render concrete certain archetypes. The models are obviously musical, for me, and the references are those of a specific period in music history; but I believe that the aspiration to find balance between form and content, which I identify as “classic” aspiration”, is universal and always modern.

This has a lot to do with a balance between the idea and the realization, content and form. I don’t think that in music, though, “elegance” is in itself a parameter that should be favored. Sometimes, it undermines the elegant equilibrium that brings us to discover interesting things. One can do this only if, at the foundation, an idea of proportion and balance has been established. Beatles songs are a good example: I feel a great invention, both in text and in the harmonies, and in the often unusual arrangements. Everything always occurs within a very tested and nearly invariable framework. In other words, I am interested in the encounter between invention and that which exists already. I believe that from this, an original and unpredictable elegance can come to life.