WHERE STRANGE ART LIVES: SILVIA TOROZZI & DEBORAH WALKER
By Eddie Giesen
Let me share with you a literal underground wonder of inner city Tāmaki Makaurau. We wander
down the stairs through St. Kevin’s arcade on Karangahape Road, left past the virid reaching
pohutukawas at the top of Myer’s Park, and into the subbasement of the Parisian Tie Factory.
Here lurks The Audio Foundation. A charitable trust dedicated to nurturing the rich and unruly
underbelly of this city's sound art scene. The gloriously musically obtuse.
Tonight I have come to see Silvia Tarozzi (violin) and Deborah Walker (cello) from Italy. A duo of some international renown in contemporary classical circles, according to the internet. In an intimate room of about 30 people, Jeff Henderson, director of The Audio Foundation informs us that alongside Allana Goldsmith (Ngati Porou/Ngai Tai exploratory jazz singer) he will provide a curtain raising performance.
Goldsmith quickly proves herself to be a vocalist of enough skill and confidence to leave the tired trope of tunefulness aside. Using the resonant cavities of her mouth and skull, she sculpts a pitch inside herself, while also exploiting the room as an exterior extension of her instrument. Sometimes, a lack of melody can overstimulate my imagination, similar to the effects of a sensory deprivation chamber. I can’t help but find comparison between her mouth and the room. The audience sits, like teeth in her head, each one affecting the sound. Simultaneously Henderson delivers modulated tone, displaying how to play the clarinet without moving one's fingers. He too laughs in the face of tune, instead utilising his formidable skills to perform one long primally hewn note. Unusual feelings arise when he employs the room's resonance by raising his yowling stick to the ceiling. He emits a strange gargling noise as though he is drinking the spit from his clarinet like some sort of insane depraved junkie. At this point Goldsmith licks her lips like a lizard and releases an enormous, mighty and awful sound like a Gregorian Big Mac, much to my delight. It’s over. I clap enthusiastically as I try to establish my consolidation of emotions. Fascinated, repulsed, delighted, relieved.... whatever it is, I love it.
Now the main event: Walker and Tarozzi enter the stage with cello and violin respectively. Clad in stylish sneakers and bright primary colours, I am struck by the thought that our favourite aunties have formed a Wiggles covers band. They explain their intention to explore improvisations inspired by their grandmothers’ anti-fascist folk songs. During the Second World War, the local partisan resistance took shape in the hills of Emilia-Romagna (northern Italy), as villagers left to fight against fascist forces. Those who remained, especially the women, including their grandmothers, found strength and solidarity in daily life, shared labour, and collective political belief. From that union, songs emerged — passed from village to village, shaped by voices raised in the strength of resistance. These melodies now form a vital thread in Italy’s musical and cultural heritage. Tonight, Walker and Tarozzi carry them forward, not as nostalgia, but as living sound.
Once the performance begins they use minimalist, awkward musical tones to portray a sense of story without words. Sounds to impart the weight of history. In attacking a string perpendicular to traditional technique, one discovers expressions beyond melody by sliding, scratching, and assaulting. This is where the strange art lives.
Like an electrified tadpole, Tarozzi begins the second piece with aggressive sound work on her violin. Walker joins, garroting the cello like the poor thing wasn't worthy of life. Someone whispers to me that they are singing (yes they are singing now) “And if we die, we will be free, and oh, how death will be worth it all”. Powerful and heart- wrenching stuff. Suddenly and without warning, they launch into vocable wordplay “Taka Tata taka taka ta Tata taka ta ka”, with such precision, it becomes hard to imagine that this part is improvised.
Local violinist Johnny Chang joins the stage with a second violin of aggression, and there is a phenomenal interplay between melody and discordant tune, tricking us into a sense of traditional sonic narrative, where in fact there is none. An exquisite, horrendous cacophony of angry grandmothers arises through the prickling air, chanting, yelling, wailing. Walker thumps the cello strings with the thorax of her fingers, twin violins screech and grate as though they are attempting to crawl underneath the skin of my back. Soon all three artists thread us through a gentle journey of singular sonics, slowly bringing the tone to zero. They begin to patter and pringle, bumping and scratching their instruments to great acoustic effect. At this point, deep in the melee of astonishment, I consider how this kind of work challenges our concept of opinion, music and entertainment. Even our concept of what it is to be an expert.
Momentarily I think I hear the opening riff of Thunderstruck by AC/DC as Tarozzi taps frantically at the violin’s tender neck. I recognise a sweet and strong communion as the arms of these women work. They heavily graft at their tools, a strength of purpose and labour shared by their ancestors, nonnas in the fields, working the land. The journey they take us on between tradition and modern exploration, feels like a powerful and important one. Those few portions of relatable melody and storytelling keep us tethered through their adventures in sound.
And as they play us the last bitter refrains of the mountain folk song we all somehow recognise by now, we weep deeply into our laps and wonder gratefully on the meaning of human existence.
Tonight I have come to see Silvia Tarozzi (violin) and Deborah Walker (cello) from Italy. A duo of some international renown in contemporary classical circles, according to the internet. In an intimate room of about 30 people, Jeff Henderson, director of The Audio Foundation informs us that alongside Allana Goldsmith (Ngati Porou/Ngai Tai exploratory jazz singer) he will provide a curtain raising performance.
Goldsmith quickly proves herself to be a vocalist of enough skill and confidence to leave the tired trope of tunefulness aside. Using the resonant cavities of her mouth and skull, she sculpts a pitch inside herself, while also exploiting the room as an exterior extension of her instrument. Sometimes, a lack of melody can overstimulate my imagination, similar to the effects of a sensory deprivation chamber. I can’t help but find comparison between her mouth and the room. The audience sits, like teeth in her head, each one affecting the sound. Simultaneously Henderson delivers modulated tone, displaying how to play the clarinet without moving one's fingers. He too laughs in the face of tune, instead utilising his formidable skills to perform one long primally hewn note. Unusual feelings arise when he employs the room's resonance by raising his yowling stick to the ceiling. He emits a strange gargling noise as though he is drinking the spit from his clarinet like some sort of insane depraved junkie. At this point Goldsmith licks her lips like a lizard and releases an enormous, mighty and awful sound like a Gregorian Big Mac, much to my delight. It’s over. I clap enthusiastically as I try to establish my consolidation of emotions. Fascinated, repulsed, delighted, relieved.... whatever it is, I love it.
Now the main event: Walker and Tarozzi enter the stage with cello and violin respectively. Clad in stylish sneakers and bright primary colours, I am struck by the thought that our favourite aunties have formed a Wiggles covers band. They explain their intention to explore improvisations inspired by their grandmothers’ anti-fascist folk songs. During the Second World War, the local partisan resistance took shape in the hills of Emilia-Romagna (northern Italy), as villagers left to fight against fascist forces. Those who remained, especially the women, including their grandmothers, found strength and solidarity in daily life, shared labour, and collective political belief. From that union, songs emerged — passed from village to village, shaped by voices raised in the strength of resistance. These melodies now form a vital thread in Italy’s musical and cultural heritage. Tonight, Walker and Tarozzi carry them forward, not as nostalgia, but as living sound.
Once the performance begins they use minimalist, awkward musical tones to portray a sense of story without words. Sounds to impart the weight of history. In attacking a string perpendicular to traditional technique, one discovers expressions beyond melody by sliding, scratching, and assaulting. This is where the strange art lives.
Like an electrified tadpole, Tarozzi begins the second piece with aggressive sound work on her violin. Walker joins, garroting the cello like the poor thing wasn't worthy of life. Someone whispers to me that they are singing (yes they are singing now) “And if we die, we will be free, and oh, how death will be worth it all”. Powerful and heart- wrenching stuff. Suddenly and without warning, they launch into vocable wordplay “Taka Tata taka taka ta Tata taka ta ka”, with such precision, it becomes hard to imagine that this part is improvised.
Local violinist Johnny Chang joins the stage with a second violin of aggression, and there is a phenomenal interplay between melody and discordant tune, tricking us into a sense of traditional sonic narrative, where in fact there is none. An exquisite, horrendous cacophony of angry grandmothers arises through the prickling air, chanting, yelling, wailing. Walker thumps the cello strings with the thorax of her fingers, twin violins screech and grate as though they are attempting to crawl underneath the skin of my back. Soon all three artists thread us through a gentle journey of singular sonics, slowly bringing the tone to zero. They begin to patter and pringle, bumping and scratching their instruments to great acoustic effect. At this point, deep in the melee of astonishment, I consider how this kind of work challenges our concept of opinion, music and entertainment. Even our concept of what it is to be an expert.
Momentarily I think I hear the opening riff of Thunderstruck by AC/DC as Tarozzi taps frantically at the violin’s tender neck. I recognise a sweet and strong communion as the arms of these women work. They heavily graft at their tools, a strength of purpose and labour shared by their ancestors, nonnas in the fields, working the land. The journey they take us on between tradition and modern exploration, feels like a powerful and important one. Those few portions of relatable melody and storytelling keep us tethered through their adventures in sound.
And as they play us the last bitter refrains of the mountain folk song we all somehow recognise by now, we weep deeply into our laps and wonder gratefully on the meaning of human existence.
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.
silviatarozzideborahwalker.bandcamp.com
