“Sounding Limits” features a series of compositions resulted from a long-term collaboration between the French composer Pascale Criton and the Italian string players Silvia Tarozzi & Deborah Walker. Silvia Tarozzi, violin, and Deborah Walker, cello, are actively involved in the fields of contemporary experimental music and free improvisation. Together with Pascale Criton they have been exploring microtonal extended techniques and gestural processes on a violin and a cello tuned in 1/16 of a tone. The compositions that have resulted from this process are conceived as scripts. They challenge the sense of form and the attitude of interpretation, transforming it into a creative process. Time and motion are no longer defined by pitches and metrical systems but are embodied as diagrams and moods.
A former student of microtonal pioneer Ivan Wyschnegradsky and spectralist Gérard Grisey, PASCALE CRITON is internationally known for her use of specific tunings with minute intervals. Since the 1980s, she has been exploring sound variability, multisensory receptions and the spatialization of listening, applying alternative tunings (1/12th, 1/16th) to various instruments (violin, cello, guitar and piano) combined with computing and listening devices. Her works have been performed in internationnal venues and festivals and she has collaborated with music research studios such as IRCAM, InaGRM, GMEA, GMEM. A CD “Pascale Criton – Infra”, appeared at Potlatch (2017). She recently edited Ivan Wyschnegradsky, Libération du son, Ecrits 1916-1979 (Singer-Polignac Award, 2014) and Gilles Deleuze, la pensée-musique, Symétrie (2015), a testimony of her encounter with the philosopher Gilles Deleuze regarding music.