Assolo

The soloist is an apple.

The name is Italian for a solo. An orchestra tunes up first, fresh and clean. Artemisia sits dry under lime, and a floral middle of jasmine and marigold stays back on purpose. Then one voice steps clear of all of it and takes a story of its own.

A Golden Delicious. Crystalline, sweet, unpredictable, and loud and clear in that company. The artist's verve keeps enriching it out there, with original nuances and unexpected contrasts. Afterwards it blends back into the woody, musky ground it came out of. Teak runs strong and dry there. Cedarwood and musk keep it company, and none of it forces itself forward.

Silvio Levi writes a story and then has it translated into smell. A Milanese organic chemist who left pharmaceutical research to take over the family business, Levi created Pitti Immagine Fragranze and then Esxence, coordinated and published the translations of Guy Robert and Maurice Maurin, and works with Mark Buxton, Maurizio Cerizza and Arturetto Landi among them. The text comes first every time, and the materials are chosen to carry it.

Every release also has music written for it. At the start of the project the composer Philip Abussi was handed the fragrances anonymously, without the name, the briefing or the ingredients, and asked only for the sensations; the inspirations came afterwards, and Abussi had caught every one. Each bottle ships wound in a telegraphic stripe of paper carrying the text the fragrance came from, with a red ribbon tied on by hand.