TANSY DAVIES
a collection of works‘… the music is entirely individual,
vivid, and above all acutely “heard”.'The Independent (Stephen Walsh)
THE MUSIC OF TANSY DAVIESHold tight: Tansy Davies’s music jolts and pulses. Listening to
it is a bit like being on a train that can bump suddenly from
racing velocity to slowness, and that can somehow rattle
along in a somewhat dislocated fashion at several different
speeds at the same time. Meanwhile, the view out of the
window will be changing. You may think you see a city
crossroads at night - people rushing, people still, warm air
thumping from a club doorway, the gleam of a streetlamp
on the wing of a car. But blink and the scene shifts. It’s a
medieval landscape, maybe retouched in fluorescent
colours. Or, as the station turns to Bach, it’s Baroque. Or it’s a
sacred space, eastern or western, ancient or modern, with
chant rising.
Scenes and travel may say something of what this music is
about, but the composer’s own metaphors come most often
from architecture, and especially from the buildings of Zaha
Hadid. Davies’s trumpet concerto Spiral House (2004) and
short orchestral piece Tilting (2005) are explicit responses to
Hadid’s designs. The orchestra in Tilting, she says, ‘is like a
very large building with its own natural distortions’. As an
architect of time, she makes her structures with small
modules - groups of notes and rhythmic figures, scored in
particular and often unusual ways - that are repeated, brick
by brick, but with bendings as these musical units respond
to the tensions and strains acting on them, and create more
tensions and strains for the future.
It is a way of thinking that descends from Stravinsky by way
of Louis Andriessen. With those composers, too, Davies
shares the knack of creating effective collisions and
collusions between classical and popular elements. A
contemporary-music ensemble, with Birtwistle and Ligeti in
its bones, thrums with amplified sounds and emphatic
syncopations; a solo saxophone - in Iris (2004), one of this
composer’s richest scores - plays a concerto role out of a steamy history in jazz and rock.
© Paul Griffiths
BIOGRAPHY
In recent years Davies (b1973) has established herself at the vanguard of the new wave of young British composers. Following
initial studies at Colchester Institute (French horn and composition), she later freelanced professionally in orchestras and rock
bands whilst studying composition with Simon Bainbridge at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and then, later, for her PhD
with Simon Holt at Royal Holloway College, London (where she is Composer in Residence).
In June 2006, the BBC SO and Zsolt Nagy performed (and recorded for broadcast) the orchestral work Tilting, and in February
2007 the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and Thomas Adès gave the premiere of a 20-minute commission for large
ensemble, Falling Angel, in Birmingham and at the Présences festival in Paris.Other recent commissions include works for the
Britten Sinfonia, the CBSO Youth Orchestra, the City of London Sinfonia, the Norwegian ensemble BIT 20, and a large-scale multi-
media work - Elephant and Castle - for the 2007 Aldeburgh Festival.
© Faber Music 2007
RREEVVIIEEWWSS
kkiinnggppiinn‘...kingpin, named after the only part of the Model T engine that Henry Ford
supposedly found never wore out. Opening lurchings in the bass suggested
Frankenstein’s monster on the ballroom floor. But the rhythmic machinery
never collapsed as the music wheeled around at conflicting speeds and
instrumental colours, clanking, tootling and chortling away until the final
upbeat “kerplunk”.
With Davies, contemporary music never lives in an airtight box. It’s out on the
street, friendly - aggressive, mingling with rock without ever losing the poise
that stems from the right number of notes in the right place. Boyd and the
CLS might have shot up and down elsewhere, but in the bedlam of kingpin,
perversely enough, they found stability.’
The Times (Geoff Brown) 26 April 2007
SSppiirraall HHoouussee‘The most fascinating work on the programme… the breathtaking trumpet
concerto by Tansy Davies, entitled Spiral House, dazzlingly played by
principal trumpet Mark O’Keeffe and the SSO.
For a first orchestral composition, this was a tour de force, a vast juddering
monster of a piece, with its unforgettable rhythmic tread conjuring images of
the lumbering giants in The Ring, and its mind-blowing trumpet solos
wonderfully offset in a muted Miles Davis soundalike section. An impressive
orchestral debut.’
The Glasgow Herald (Michael Tumelty) March 2006
SSttrreeaammlliinneess‘Streamlines by the exciting young composer Tansy Davies, a mini-concerto
for orchestra highlighting every section along its funky, energetic progress,
posing challenges of articulation and execution (not least for the continuo-
like percussion section) brilliantly encompassed under Paul Daniel’s
understanding direction.’
Birmingham Post (Christopher Morley) 29 February 2007
TTiillttiinngg‘… in its structural inspiration, Tilting proved to be one further work inspired by
her fascination with Zaha Hadid, the Iraqi-born architect famous for cubes
and slabs conjoined at perilous angles. Now, in a sense, the orchestra was
the building; and there was Davies staring up at it, creating a giddy musical
architecture from superimposed layers, hiccupping rhythms, melodic flute
fragments, distorted echoes of troubadour songs - everything glinting in
sharp, bright shapes and colours… Most exhilarating.’
The Times (Geoff Brown) 16 June 2005
OORRCCHHEESSTTRRAALL WWOORRKKSSkkiinnggppiinn (2007)chamber orchestraDuration 7 minutes2222 - 2200 - timp - strings (86442)
Commissioned for the City of London Sinfonia byMedway Council with funds from Arts CouncilEngland, South East
FP: 20.4.07, Turner Sims Concert Hall,Southampton, UK: City of London Sinfonia/Douglas Boyd
Score and parts for hire
SSppiirraall HHoouussee (2004)trumpet and orchestra Duration 22 minutes
picc.2.2.ca.cl.2bcl.bsn.2cbsn - 432.btrb.1 - perc(3) - strings
Commissioned by the BBC
FP: 4.3.06, Glasgow City Halls, Glasgow, UK: Mark O’Keeffe/BBC Scottish SO/Zsolt Nagy
Score and parts for hire
SSttrreeaammlliinneess (2006)orchestraDuration 10 minutes
picc.2.3.3.2.cbsn - 4.3.2.btrb.1 - perc(4/5) - harp - strings
Commissioned by CBSO Youth Orchestra withfunding from the Feeney Trust
FP: 18.2.07, Symphony Hall, Birmingham, UK:CBSO Youth Orchestra/Paul Daniel
Score and parts for hire
TTiillttiinngg (2005)orchestra Duration 7 minutes
picc.2.3(III=ca).3(III=bcl).2.cbsn - 4231 - perc(3) - harp - cel - strings
Commissioned by the London SymphonyOrchestra
FP: 14.6.05, Barbican Hall, London, UK: LondonSymphony Orchestra/Christophe Mangou
Score and parts for hire
excerpt from neon
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CCHHAAMMBBEERR WWOORRKKSSFFaalllliinngg AAnnggeell (2006)chamber ensemble of 17 playersDuration 21 minutes
1(=afl & picc).1(=ca).1(=bcl).1Eb (=bcl).1(=cbsn) - 2.2(1& 2 = fl.hn) - perc(2) - electrickeyboard on harpischord setting (= preparedpiano) - 2vln.vla.vcl.db
Commissioned by Birmingham ContemporaryMusic Group with financial assistance from ArtsCouncil England, West Midlands and BCMG’sSound Investment Scheme
FP: 3.2.07, CBSO Centre, Birmingham, UK: BCMG/Thomas Adès
Score and parts for hire
IIrriiss (2004)soprano saxophone & chamber ensemble of 15 players Duration 14 minutes
1111 - 1110 - perc(1) - harp - pno - strings
Created through the London Sinfonietta’s Blue Touch Paper scheme, supported by theGulbenkian Foundation
FP: 4.7.04, Cheltenham Festival, CheltenhamTown Hall, UK: Simon Haram/London Sinfonietta/Pierre-André Valade
Score and parts for hire
nneeoonn (2004)chamber ensemble of 7 playersDuration 10 minutes
bcl(with amplification).ssax - perc(1) - elec keyboard - vln/vlc/db
Written for the Composers Ensemble
FP: 26.5.04, Dockyard Church, Chatham, UK:Composers Ensemble/Richard Baker
Score and parts for hire (recording on London
Sinfonietta Live)
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FFaalllliinngg AAnnggeell ‘...Falling Angel by Tansy Davies is scored for only 17 players, but the impact
of its sound-palette makes them seem at least double that number. There is
so much colourful activity within this 21-minute piece, varying combinations
of instruments creating tensions and resolutions, that resources seem infinite.
The inspiration comes from the painting Falling Angel by German artist
Anselm Kiefer, and the Falling Angel in this score seems to be an electronic
keyboard set to alleged harpsichord registration, puny and vulnerable amid
Davies’ wonderful welter of orchestral writing.
Timbres are rewardingly explored: brass in jagged annunciatory fanfares,
extremes of woodwind registers opening up chording of vast inference,
serene punctuations dividing paragraphs of hectic activity and a big trumpet
summons dissolving into a heroic flute skirmish.
A string-led chorale under incessant attack leads to a spiky extended
conclusion almost Rite of Spring-like in its raw heavings.’
Birmingham Post (Christopher Morley) 5 February 2007
‘A la recherche d’une musique noire et brillante, la créatrice mêle ici nombre
de sons disparates: raclement de cor, cordes grattées, rebonds d’archers,
tapotage de steel-drum, tintements de xylophone, pépiement de clarinette
ou de piccolo, notes crues de synthétiseur, etc. On reste assez perplexe,
mais le résultat a de la consistance et ne manque pas de faire sourire.’
www.anaclase.com (Laurent Bergnach) February 2007
IIrriiss‘Brilliantly uninhibited wind and semi-pitched percussion sonorities form
blocks against the soft background of a slightly rancid string chorale - the
very description evokes memories. Yet the music is entirely individual, vivid,
and above all acutely “heard”.’
The Independent (Stephen Walsh) 8 July 2004
nneeoonn‘… a gloriously offbeat scherzo made from “distressed” materials.
The Sunday Times (Paul Driver) 27 February 2005
‘This is Stravinsky for the club generation, modernist collage built from twisted
funk riffs; deceptively complex music that repays repeated listening.’
The Classical Source (Rob Witts) 2004
Chamber orchestraThe Void in this Colour (2001)
String orchestraResiduum (2004)
Chamber ensembleContraband (2006)Fern (2003)grind show (2007)inside out 1 (2002)
inside out 2 (2003)make black white (2004)salt box (2005)spine (2005)Undertow (1999)Trio (2002)
Solo/duoArabescos (2002)Loopholes and Lynchpins (2001)Loure (2000)
Small Black Stone (2000)Spindle (2001)
Vocal/choraLGreenhouses (2003)Women In Love (2005)Picking Raspberries at Eagles Nest Lake (1999)Oven In The Underworld (2006)
www.BMIC.co.uk email: [email protected]
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