Eliane Radigue: Pieces from Occam Ocean

Éliane Radigue (born 1932) is regarded as one of the most innovative and influential composers working today. Up until 2000, she was known for work produced electronically. Since that time, she has composed mostly for acoustic instruments, and from 2011, she has composed exclusively in collaboration with individual performers, working with the musician’s personal technique and relationship to their instrument, using solely oral and aural means of transmission rather than written scores. The resulting body of work is the series Occam Ocean, some 80 solos and chamber pieces, written for some of the leading exponents of experimental music.

“What I ask of the musicians is highly demanding. Rather than the virtuosity of speed, it concerns the virtuosity of absolute control of the instrument, an extreme, subtle and delicate kind of virtuosity. … Regardless of what is being used, the essential goal is to produce and bring out the partials, the overtones, the harmonics and sub harmonics, these vibrations in the air, not only those of the string or the breath, but the intangible contents of sound. An instrument vibrating beyond the fundamental(s) generates an extraordinary richness that turns into fascination.”