Oltracuidansa is the radical questioning of the relation between the performer’s body and instrument: What is the language of the contrabass? How to give voice to the thought? In the variety of the contrabass voices, how to find “The Voice”? And finally, if “the voice’s flight in the language must come to an end”, if “the achieved thought has no more thought”, doesn’t one arrive at the abyss of silence? Stefano Scodanibbio — regarded as one of the great interpreters of the contemporary contrabass as well as a composer — uses his instrument to ponder these thoughts. Oltracuidansa digs into the bowels of the instrument, revealing the primal, animal sides of the contrabass through unorthodox techniques in bowing, pizzicato, left and right hand, etc.

Scodanibbio recorded almost 6 hours of contrabass sound materials. The taped sounds, all produced solely by the contrabass, are the result of 26 different methods of sound production — they were then cut and used in a polyphonic way via multitrack editing. The amazing sounds which result are not filtered or modified, just a small reverb unit has been used. The tape was created at CCMIX (Centre de Création Musicale Iannis Xenakis) in Paris.