A project created with double bassist Florentin Ginot. 

We are all lichens; so we can be scraped off the rocks by the Furies, who still erupt to avenge crimes against the earth.

These words by Donna Haraway, found in her book Staying with the Trouble (2016), encapsulate some of the background themes of the project: environmentalism, feminism, the threat of discontinuity and the potential of disruption. The forces—soprano and double bass— are themselves troublesome. They are gendered, they have many opposing qualities, they are grainy and yet somewhat bare as a combination.

‘We are all lichens’ proposes a collision between the sparse and minimal music of the Czech composer Martin Smolka and the powerful, noise-infused sound of the Polish performer/composer Anna Zaradny, who will perform on stage beside the duo. Smolka's 30-minute cycle for voice and double bass, All is Ceiled, is a sequence of fragile and personal meditations on the natural world that sets text by Thoreau and from the New Testament. This will be followed by Anna Zaradny's seven-chapter work E U P H O R I A O F F U R I E S for voice, double bass and electronics.

PERFORMANCES

4 May 2022: Acht Brücken Festival, Sankt Peter, Köln

24 May 2022: Milano Musica Festival, Pirelli Hangar Bicocca, Milan

OTHER REPERTOIRE FOR THE DUO

Pascale Criton Ritournelle for J&F (2021; 8')