Tansy Davies (born 29 May 1973,
Bristol
Bristol () is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, the most populous city in the region. Built around the River Avon, Bristol, River Avon, it is bordered by t ...
) is an English composer of
contemporary classical music
Contemporary classical music is Western art music composed close to the present day. At the beginning of the 21st-century classical music, 21st century, it commonly referred to the post-1945 Modernism (music), post-tonal music after the death of ...
. She won the BBC Young Composers' Competition in 1996 and has written works for ensembles such as the London Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. In 2023 she was awarded the
Ivor Novello Award
The Ivor Novello Awards, named after the Welsh entertainer Ivor Novello, are awards for songwriting and Musical composition, composing. They have been presented annually in London by the The Ivors Academy, Ivors Academy, formerly called the Britis ...
for Outstanding Works Collections at The Ivors Classical Award in recognition of her outstanding achievements in composition. In 2019, she was listed as one of the UK’s most influential people by the
Evening Standard
The ''London Standard'', formerly the ''Evening Standard'' (1904–2024) and originally ''The Standard'' (1827–1904), is a long-established regional newspaper published weekly and distributed free newspaper, free of charge in London, Engl ...
’s ''Progress 1000,'' alongside
Simon Rattle and
Dave''.''
Early life
Davies started out singing and playing guitar in a rock band. She developed an interest in composition in her teens and studied composition and French horn at the
Colchester Institute,
followed by further study with
Simon Bainbridge at the
Guildhall School of Music and Drama
The Guildhall School of Music and Drama is a music school, music and drama school located in the City of London, England. Established in 1880, the school offers undergraduate and postgraduate training in all aspects of classical music and jazz al ...
and with Simon Holt. Davies has been Composer-in-Residence at Royal Holloway, University of London, where she gained a PhD, and currently teaches at the
Royal Academy of Music
The Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in London, England, is one of the oldest music schools in the UK, founded in 1822 by John Fane and Nicolas-Charles Bochsa. It received its royal charter in 1830 from King George IV with the support of the firs ...
in London. She also worked for three years as a freelance horn player and was a member of the Moon Velvet Collective.
Commissions
Davies was a prizewinner in the 1996 BBC Young Composers' Competition.
She has received a number of commissions from a number of organisations, for such works as the following:
* ''Iris'' (2004), commission from the
Cheltenham Festival
* ''Residuum'' (2004), commission from the
Orchestra of the Swan
* ''Tilting'' (2005), commission from the
London Symphony Orchestra
The London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) is a British symphony orchestra based in London. Founded in 1904, the LSO is the oldest of London's orchestras, symphony orchestras. The LSO was created by a group of players who left Henry Wood's Queen's ...
* ''Spine'' (2005), commission from the
Aldeburgh Festival
The Aldeburgh Festival of Music and the Arts is an English arts festival devoted mainly to classical music. It takes place each June in the town of Aldeburgh, Suffolk and is centred on Snape Maltings Concert Hall.
History of the Aldeburgh Festi ...
* ''As With Voices And With Tears'' (2010), commission for
The Portsmouth Grammar School
* ''Christmas hath a darkness'' (2011), commission for
A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, King's College Cambridge 2011.
* "Between Worlds" (2015), a commission from
The Barbican Centre, for
The English National Opera.
In February 2007, the
Birmingham Contemporary Music Group
Birmingham Contemporary Music Group (BCMG) is a British chamber ensemble based in Birmingham, England specialising in the performance of Contemporary classical music, new and contemporary music. BCMG performs regularly at the CBSO Centre and Symph ...
and
Thomas Adès
Thomas Joseph Edmund Adès (born 1 March 1971) is a British composer, pianist and conductor. Five compositions by Adès received votes in the 2017 Classic Voice poll of the greatest works of art music since 2000: ''The Tempest (opera), The T ...
gave the premiere of ''Falling Angel'', a 20-minute commission for large ensemble in Birmingham, and at the Présences festival in Paris. Her first commission for
The Proms
The BBC Proms is an eight-week summer season of daily orchestral classical music concerts and other events held annually, predominantly in the Royal Albert Hall in central London. Robert Newman founded The Proms in 1895. Since 1927, the ...
, ''Wild Card'' for orchestra, received its world premiere in September 2010.
Musical style
Davies' music is informed by the worlds of the
classical avant-garde,
funk
Funk is a music genre that originated in African-American communities in the mid-1960s when musicians created a rhythmic, danceable new form of music through a mixture of various music genres that were popular among African-Americans in the ...
,
experimental rock
Experimental rock, also called avant-rock, is a subgenre of rock music that pushes the boundaries of common composition and performance technique or which experiments with the basic elements of the genre. Artists aim to liberate and innovate, wit ...
,
disco
Disco is a music genre, genre of dance music and a subculture that emerged in the late 1960s from the United States' urban nightclub, nightlife, particularly in African Americans, African-American, Italian-Americans, Italian-American, LGBTQ ...
,
bebop
Bebop or bop is a style of jazz developed in the early to mid-1940s in the United States. The style features compositions characterized by a fast tempo (usually exceeding 200 bpm), complex chord progressions with rapid chord changes and numerou ...
,
alt-pop and
modernism
Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...
. Her scores contain unusual directions, such as 'urban, muscular', 'seedy, low slung', 'stealthy' and 'solid, grinding'. Other influences on her compositions have included the architecture of
Zaha Hadid,
in her trumpet
concerto
A concerto (; plural ''concertos'', or ''concerti'' from the Italian plural) is, from the late Baroque era, mostly understood as an instrumental composition, written for one or more soloists accompanied by an orchestra or other ensemble. The ...
''Spiral House''. She has also collaborated with the video artist Zara Matthews.
The ''
Independent
Independent or Independents may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups
* Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in Pennsylvania, United States
* Independentes (English: Independents), a Portuguese artist ...
'' said of her:
Of her 2006 work ''Falling Angel'', Davies said in the ''
Daily Telegraph
''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a British daily broadsheet conservative newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed in the United Kingdom and internationally. It was foun ...
'':
Recordings
Davies has been the subject of three portrait CDs, ''Troubairitz'' (
Nonclassical
Nonclassical is a British independent record label and night club founded in 2004 by Gabriel Prokofiev, grandson of Sergei Prokofiev.
History
Nonclassical has released fourteen albums, each following a concept of recording new contemporary cl ...
Recordings, 2011), ''Spine'' (
NMC Recordings
NMC Recordings is a British recording label and a charity which specialises in recording works by living composers from the British Isles.
History
The composer Colin Matthews founded NMC in 1989, with financial assistance from the Gustav Hols ...
, 2012) and ''Nature'' (NMC, 2021). Other compositions appear in various anthologies, notably on the NMC label.
Compositions
Davies' first opera, ''Between Worlds'', is about the
terror attacks in the USA in 2001.
She commented in the
Guardian:
I don’t think it could have been done earlier. It just grew organically. We had another idea first. But gradually the librettist oet Nick Drake and the director Deborah Warner moved step by step towards it. The idea grew in all of us, and we knew we had to be brave and let ourselves be led by our highest instincts; to make something intensely human and to somehow transform or transcend the darkness into light. The story is told from many perspectives, from those trapped inside one of the Twin Towers, from there on the ground (people in NYC looking up), and from a far, cosmic place: an orchestral “fabric of the universe”, with the figure of a shaman at its centre who relays messages across time and space... Music is a fantastic vehicle for expressing energy, emotion, feelings that go beyond language.
Her chamber opera of 2018, ''Cave'', with Drake as librettist again, was staged in an abandoned industrial warehouse by
The Royal Opera. It uses electronics as well as a small ensemble and "only two singers".
References
External links
Official Tansy Davies websiteFaber Music page on Tansy DaviesTansy Davies on the British Music Collection
{{DEFAULTSORT:Davies, Tansy
1973 births
Living people
Alumni of Royal Holloway, University of London
20th-century English classical composers
21st-century English classical composers
Musicians from Bristol
English women classical composers
20th-century English women composers
21st-century English women composers