From October 2019 through May 2020, Passepartout Duo spent seven months as artists in residence at the Swatch Art Peace Hotel in Shanghai.

In October 2019, we took a long train journey across Asia from Tbilisi to Shanghai, connecting our residency in Geneva with our residency in Shanghai. Passing through Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and China we performed concerts using a portable homemade set of instruments along the way.

From July through the end of September, Passepartout Duo had a very special opportunity: three months in residence in Geneva, Switzerland at the Embassy of Foreign Artists.

Nakanojo is the kind of sleepy little town that, for one reason or another, we usually end up staying in. Every two years it awakens again with a sprawling Biennale of contemporary art that hosts over 100 artists. The Biennale focuses on repurposing abandoned and otherwise unused spaces as art venues, taking participants a long way from the white walls of galleries with some stunning results!

For one month, we stayed with Yannis Zhang and Yumo Wu (collaborators from our Iceland project) in their studio in Beijing. Following that, we moved on to Chongqing for a residency at Dimensions Art Center.

We have been planning our Asia tour for more than a year, and ended up scheduling a hectic but rewarding series of universities engagements and performances. After a year focusing on the Nordic countries, we felt like it was time to challenge ourselves and change continents.

Our Nordic Project took us to Denmark, Iceland, Finland (twice), Norway (twice), Sweden, and the Faroe Islands. We were able to premiere works by nine composers and perform at the Summartónar Festival (FO) and Dark Music Days (IS). Hafdís Bjarnadottír wrote us a piece called A Northern Year - we think it’s also a perfect title for our journey. Here are some of the highlights from each stop.

Passepartout Duo just finished a 2-week-long artist residency in Åland Islands, at the Eckerö Post and Customs House. Åland is an archipelago/autonomous Finnish region in the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Finland.

Passepartout Duo's residency in Iceland lasted 9 weeks and we can assure you, none of them were boring. All of them were snowy. In the small fishing town of Ólafsfjörður (population 800), we ended up accomplishing so much more than anticipated.