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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USABoosey & Hawkes Inc35 East 21st St, New York, NY 10010-6212, USAPromotion: tel 001 212 358 5300fax 001 212 358 5301email composers.us@booseys.comHire: tel 001 212 358 5306fax 001 212 358 5307www.boosey.com/usrentalISBN10: 0-571-59872-2 EAN13: 978-0-571-59872-4

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)

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PPhhoottoo ccrreeddiitt:: Maurice FoxallPrinted in England August 2007