The Nest Duo features the Italian, Bergamo-based cornetist, electronics player, and vocalist Graziano Gatti Quadri and the Milan-based guitarist and electronics player Massimo Betti, who are close friends that have been collaborating for about fifteen years. A Whisper of Roots is their debut album as a duo. It is a nine-part, layered suite comprised of fragments of folk songs and nursery rhymes, fleeting melodic themes, ternary metres of folk music from Lombardy, and distant, atmospheric soundscapes. The album was recorded at Reparto Elettroacustica in Ardesio in September 2025.
Quadri and Betti evoke the feeling of a close and intimate haven, a nest, a place of origin, and a place of shelter, stressed by the deep, complementary interplay of the duo. A Whisper of Roots reflects their own feelings and memories from the picturesque and vibrant region of Lombardy, rich with popular melodies, dances, art, and beautiful and colorful landscapes.
Quadri and Betti use the traditional folk elements as a living, most relevant heritage, which stimulates them to search and find new timbral possibilities within the duo’s dynamics. They weave minimalist, cyclical motifs, repeated in studio treatments, effects-laden, and loop-like textures that generate a meditative, relaxed yet hypnotic flow, that brings to mind the works of Norwegian trumpeter Arve Henriksen. The songs are sung in Italian and English and suggest how repetition, melody, and voice converge in open and irreverent, ritual-like forms.
Eyal Hareuveni
Graziano Gatti Quadri (cornet, electronics, vocals), Massimo Betti (guitar, electronics)
