The People's Republic is thrilled to present an exclusive Sydney performance by the acclaimed contemporary classical duo direct from Italy, presenting their superb cycle of traditional folk songs from Emilia Romagna...

Canti di guerra, di lavoro e d’amore (songs of war, work and love)
A contemporary re-interpretation of the female folk songs of northern Italy
"We have been working for several years on transcriptions and reinterpretations of traditional folk songs from our birthplace, the Emilia-Romagna region in Italy. These songs come from the first decades of the 20th century and from the period of the Second World War but some of them have older roots. The melodies and especially the lyrics have been transformed over time through oral transmission and adapted to different social, working and historical contexts. One of the strongest influences of our project is the repertory of choirs of female rice-field workers, the “Mondine”, with their typical polyphony and powerful singing. Women working and living in community during the months of the rice cleanse learn, develop and share a vast and varied repertoire of songs; the most beautiful voice is naturally elected as a soloist and all the others are the chorus. The timbre of voice is the right one for open spaces: a call, a full-bodied voice. The sound tension pushes the singers to go up in pitch, so that the energy increases verse after verse. The songs are the popular ones of the time, which everyone knows, but new stanzas and new melodies are also created and an original repertoire is born. In our music, the songs emerge through sounds far from tradition, rooted in contemporary musical experimentation, alternating dissonances with melodic impulses, bruitisms with draperies of impalpable harmonic sounds.
Through a game of reinventions and transformations, we translated the sound and stylistic characteristics of this repertoire. Violin, cello and voice become the elements of a new choral polyphony, in which they highlight certain aspects of the vocals or the structure of traditional songs. The human and social history of those women concerns us closely: they are the stories of our grandmothers, transmitted and heard at home, at village festivals or at school, when women and men came to tell and sing to children their experiences of war and their life in the fields.
Today, further and further away from that time and from the choral work of the fields, we wish to evoke a memory, to revive a tradition through a personal language. Touched by the evocative power of these female voices and the strength of their community life experience, we sketch an emotional territory where our relationship with the geographical coordinates and the history of the region Emilia resonates with other sounds, other places.
Between oral and notated music, tradition is reinvented and transformed."

Silvia Tarozzi and Deborah Walker share a friendship that has evolved into a long-lasting artistic partnership around improvisation and contemporary experimental creation. For almost 20 years together they have explored different musical forms working with composers, improvisers, and other musicians such as Philip Corner, Rhodri Davies, Eyvind Kang, and many others.
They have been involved together in different musical projects such as the French Dedalus Ensemble and Italian band Offlaga Disco Pax, performing at International Festivals and venues. Their long collaboration with composers Éliane Radigue, Pascale Criton and Philip Corner has led to the creation of numerous new works.
The duo has played at International venues and Festivals, such as Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Fondation Cartier Paris, Biennale Musica Venezia, Mills College, Berkeley University, C4NM San Francisco, the RedCat LA, Santa Barbara University, CalArts, Angelica Festival Bologna, Festival Musique Action Nancy, Festival Futurs Composés, Fast Forward Festival - Opera Roma, BBC Tectonics Festival Glasgow, UNAM Mexico City and Café Oto.

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Silvia Tarozzi – violin, voice
Deborah Walker – cello, voice

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