In Conversation with Polyphonia

I've spent years being drawn to work that resists easy categorisation. Composers and sound designers Jade Pybus and Andy Theakstone, who practise together as Polyphonia, make exactly that kind of work: choral architecture, layered vocal refrains, sonic environments shaped by the spaces they inhabit. Since 2019 they've been building a reputation that spans Es Devlin productions, Chanel campaigns, BBC commissions, and Olympic opening ceremonies, work that doesn't sit still long enough to be filed under any single discipline. This spring, we found ourselves in Milan together for Fuorisalone, and I took the opportunity to ask them what they'd been listening to.

K: What brought you back to Milan this year?

P: We first came in 2025, collaborating with Es Devlin on Library of Light for Salone del Mobile, exhibited at the Pinacoteca di Brera. This year we were invited back with a group of creatives to explore the week together. Less structured, more open.

K: What stayed with you?

P: Mael Hanaff's work at Dropcity. He was exploring sound for human and more-than-human audiences, how certain audio frequencies within music stimulate plant growth. Mint plants, specifically, responding visibly to what they were hearing. We found the spirit of that experimentation genuinely moving. It kept asking a question we return to often: who is design actually for?

K: This edition is themed around newness and collective optimism. What does spring mean to Polyphonia?

P: Spring feels like connection. An opening. Space for ideas that aren't fully formed yet. We're always chasing euphoria, that push and pull between nostalgia and joy. Spring feels euphoric to us. An invitation to move into the unknown, to be a little braver. That's usually when our most interesting work gets made.