Since the 1980s, she has explored the unstable elements of sound media, focusing on microtonality and psychoacoustics. The new work, Soar II, investigates the transformation of sound in surrounding spaces. Three female voices and two microtonal string instruments (violin and cello tuned in 1/16) refine timbral qualities that favor the emergence of disturbances, such as beats and other psychoacoustic phenomena. These subtle variations take the form of slightly altered sound constellations.

The project was developed in collaboration with Ny Musikk and Ensemble Dedalus (FR). Soar II was first performed at the Only Connect festival in 2019 and later at the Ultimafestivalen in 2021. In 2022, Soar II will be performed at the Festival Riverrun in Albi/Toulouse & Alentours

“One of the most beautiful works I heard took place at Kulturkirken Jakob in an afternoon concert given by the outstanding vocal quartet Song Circus (who had been so impressive at this year’s Only Connect festival).”

“A program of work by French composer Pascale Criton was astonishing, with meticulously pitched performances by two of her closest collaborators, cellist Deborah Walker and violinist Silvia Tarozzi. Tarozzi played Circle Process, a work using 1/16th tones, building an excursion from bowing the body of her instrument, producing grainy scrapes, whispered motions, high-pitched scratches, extravagant harmony, and visceral beating. Likewise, Walker extracted infinite possibilities from Chaoscaccia, blending wild glissando, left-handed pizzicato (both plucking and muting), and rapid-fire jete. The program concluded with the premiere of Soar II, in which the three vocalists of Stavanger’s Song Circus produced shadowy breaths and seductively unstable harmonies, drifting above and below shimmering lines made by Walker and Tarozzi.” Peter Margsak, National Sawdust, review Only Connect

“All five performers were involved in Soar II (Pascale Criton), receiving its world première, and to a large extent the music inhabited a related soundworld to the solo pieces. Close unisons abounded, notes jarring and buzzing in close proximity like same-charged magnetic poles repulsing each other. It was deeply mesmeric, exhibiting an incredible sense of simultaneous tension and rest; yet in almost every other respect the piece was similarly liminal, continuously caught between unison and dissonance, movement and stasis, noise and breath, and at the last, between sound and silence, voices and instruments alike interacting with air to create only the idea of sound, an idea made real in our imaginations. Absolutely stunning.” 5 against 4