Silvia Tarozzi and Deborah Walker (Italy)

Audio Foundation presents...

Silvia Tarozzi and Deborah Walker

Silvia Tarozzi (violin) and Deborah Walker (cello) have emerged as one of the most interesting duos in contemporary improvised music.

The pair first met in 2003 and since then their paths have kept crossing. For 20 years together they explored different musical forms working with composers, improvisers, featuring other musicians as Philip Corner, Rhodri Davies, Eyvind Kang, Nathalie Forget, Frantz Loriot, Alex Bruck. Their music is characterized by a profound interplay, a focus on the acoustic qualities of the sound of their instruments and the search for new possibilities in tunings, gestures and sound.

Since 2010 Silvia and Deborah have been working with Éliane Radigue, a French pioneer of electronic music. In the last 20 years Radigue focused on works for acoustic instruments developed through a specific and personal collaboration with her performers (which she calls her chevaliers). In her recent project Occam Océan, Silvia and Deborah premiered about twenty works, from solo pieces to the ensemble. Some of them have been released in Virgin Violin by I dischi di Angelica (2013) and OCCAM OCEAN 3 by SHIIIN (2021).

With their latest album Canti di guerra, di lavoro e d‘amore the duo add folk music to their contemporary classical and improvised music roots, reinterpreting songs from their youth in rural Emilia that originated from the emancipation of working class women and the partisan Resistance in World War II, especially ones sung by choirs of female rice field workers, called Mondine or Mondariso.
Their songs tell a story of hard, poorly paid work, love, the hypocrisy of society, protests, war, the challenge of working far from home, the violence of oppression and the need for political awareness.
Following years of incorporating, reinventing, and transforming these songs within their practice, Tarozzi and Walker unlock emotional territory where their relationship with Emilia resonates in concert with other sounds and places.