Son of the soprano Elcira Ramos and the music teacher Fermín Favero, he was born in La Plata and was a child prodigy who from his childhood began receiving piano, music theory and music theory lessons. At 17 years old Alberto Valentin Favero He received the Nueva Figura award, in recognition of his emerging talent.
His passion for music led him to study choral conducting, counterpoint, orchestration and composition with teachers such as Luis Gianneo, Guillermo Graetzer, Mariano Drago, Valdo Sciammarella and Ljerko Spiller. His international career began to take off in the 1970s, when he composed the emblematic “Trane Suite” in tribute to saxophonist John Coltrane, and began to set music to works by writers such as Julio Cortázar, Mario Benedetti and Pablo Neruda.
For more than a decade, he shared life and numerous shows with Nacha Guevara in countries such as Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil and Spain. His return to Argentina in 1984 marked the beginning of a prolific stage, with projects such as “Eva”, the musical with lyrics and text by Pedro Orgambide for which he composed the music. Throughout his career, he also left his mark in successful productions such as “Cabaret”, “Les Miserables” and “Sweeney Todd”.
In conversation with NOTICIAS, during a break from his performances with Nacha in La Carbonera, he does not speak from nostalgia or from the epic of the past, but from a present that has him extremely active.
News: Where is your base of operations today?
Alberto Favero: In Buenos Aires. Argentina is the place where one has the most strength. Outside one adds experiences, knowledge, tools, but identity is not exported. That is not replaced.
News: However, he spent nine years in Los Angeles.
Favero: Yes. Looking for another direction, another exhibition. Los Angeles is a great showcase, a huge mouth where the industry shows its power. Although today that word must be revised. When I arrived, in 2016, there was already this feeling of strangeness that is now evident. A convulsed world, always on the brink of conflict, with constant threats of war and an increasingly accelerated and superficial culture.
News: Was the experience frustrating?
Favero: No, revealing. Nothing lasts forever. Everything changes. And the problem is not change, but resisting it. When things don’t circulate, they get gangrene. It happens with money, with blood and also with ideas.
News: How do you see American culture today?
Favero: They have admirable founding values. The democratic vocation of its origins is extraordinary. Lincoln, Jefferson, those heroes continue to be admirable figures. But there is also a loss of density. Many things became disposable. And that is noticeable in culture, in music, in cinema, in theater.
News: Is that why the decision to return?
Favero: One cannot always live in a glass case. There are times when you need to go back to the place where things really hurt. Where history is neither an abstraction nor platform content. Being outside the homeland produces a curious effect. Some things are magnified and others are diminished. But when you work with materials linked to the identity, culture and emotional memory of a country, that hits harder. It is not patriotism or folklore. It is memory.
News: You have family in the United States, son and grandchildren. Does that stress your view of the country?
Favero: Of course. na Forces you not to simplify. One cannot fall into caricature. The United States has things that are admirable and others that are deeply problematic. Like any society. The point is not to lose the critical spirit.
News: In the past Mexico was also key on a personal level.
Favero: It was vital. We with Nacha arrived practically with what we had. Twice we left like this, and what little was left afterwards was stolen. Mexico was generous, affectionate. He gave us back something essential which is affection. That is not minor when one comes from such difficult stages.
News: When reviewing your career, what place do the 60s and 70s occupy?
Favero: They were times of liberation and experimentation, but not the only ones. Every era has its crises and outbreaks. Change is an anthropological process. Something is always happening, even if we don’t know how to name it.
News: He musicalized Benedetti, Neruda, Cortázar. How do you compose it without falling into slogans?
Favero: From emotion. In “What does he laugh at” I went down exactly the same emotional path as Benedetti. The indignation was the same. You see a newspaper cover, an obscene smile in the midst of the disaster, and you wonder: what are you laughing at? That question is not ideological, it is human. And it transcends eras.
News: Many of those songs were born in extreme political contexts.
Favero: Clear. But they were not born to go down the line. We work from emotion. That is why it is not known if the music or the lyrics were born first. When that happens, the work breathes on its own and ages better. With Nacha we have an artistic bond that became political because it was honest. We never lost sight of the aesthetic objective. When the third element, which is the public, appears, a very strong vibration is generated. And that is not manufactured. That happens or it doesn’t happen.
News: Why go back to that material now?
Favero: Because it is historical. Because it is the blood, sweat and tears of an era and a people. Not doing so would be denying it. There is a responsibility with memory, especially when everything invites quick forgetting. Those songs no longer belong to us. They are from the town. Emotional public domain. One no longer owns it, it was barely a channel.
News: Does art have an explicit political responsibility?
Favero: Commitment is inherent. It is not declaimed, it appears. If an issue is vital to a society, it matters to everyone. Why wouldn’t the artist care? Chopin with Poland, Verdi with Italy, Victor Hugo with his time. The artist cannot act distracted when the story is pressing. Art is not there to message, it is there to make people uncomfortable.
News: How do you see the Argentine cultural present?
Favero: I see it fragmented, like contemporary thought. There is talent, but also a lot of anxiety, a lot of noise. Everything wants to be immediate. There is no time to decant. Silence is missing. Urban music is part of that phenomenon. I don’t demonize her. It’s a symptom. I am interested in beauty, not as an ornament but as a transformative experience. Art is not there to manipulate or message. That’s what email is for.
News: So beauty is still a political value?
Favero: More than ever. Beauty is resistance. It is an act of freedom in a world that tends towards brutality.
News: Do you feel that today culture is more fragmented than before?
Favero: Absolutely. And not only in music. In thought, in language, in politics. Everything is fragment, impulse, reaction. Lack of continuity. Lack of breathing. And art takes time.
News: He does not deny the new.
Favero: Art is free. It always was. But freedom does not imply absence of depth. I am interested in beauty, but not in the decorative sense. I am interested in what touches human sensitivity and leaves a mark. That can be rough, uncomfortable, even cursed at first. Art does not come to save anyone. It has no intention of manipulating or convincing. It does not work for “messaging”. That’s another thing. The artist says: “This is happening.” Let’s pay attention.
News: His musical training appears as a backbone of his thinking.
Favero: Definitely. My teachers were decisive. Ljerko Spiller (Croatian nationalized Argentine violinist, music teacher and conductor) was one of my great cultural beacons. Extremely cultured, with extraordinary humor. He taught from joy. I deeply disbelieve the idea that the letter enters with blood. Enter with happiness. Learning is also a political act.
News: Do you feel that today the legacy of that learning is at risk?
Favero: I don’t know how the educational panorama in chamber music is now, in in-depth training. I don’t know him. But I do know that I had an enormous privilege. I worked with authentic people, with real knowledge, with a way of transmitting that was not authoritarian but deeply human. That is not abundant today. The first thing a teacher has to do is generate joy. That is also an ideological position.
News: Are you afraid of the passage of time?
Favero: No. The body is a temple. And experience, if used well, too.
News: How would you like to be remembered?
Favero: As someone who worked so that people could be a little better. Not to give answers, but to open questions. That’s enough.
News: What continues to sustain your creative drive?
Favero: The curiosity. And the experience. We are here to experiment. Living. We don’t know what’s next. We do know this. And in the meantime, if you can help people live a little better, even for a song, that’s enough.
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