Collaborators
Tansy Davies
Commissions
Biography
Tansy Davies rose to prominence on the British scene with a sequence of ensemble works for the Composers Ensemble (Patterning), the London Sinfonietta (Torsion) and The Brunel Ensemble (The Void in this Colour), all of which bear the hallmarks of her apprenticeship under Simon Bainbridge and Simon Holt. In her recent work, Davies has found an accommodation between the worlds of the avant-garde and experimental rock, between - in the words of one critic - Xenakis and Prince. Filled with sounds of cracking, slapping, whipping and scraping, it is music that is utterly contemporary, inhabiting the same urban landscape as industrial techno and electronica, And while Davies is similarly fascinated by the potential of 'looping' as a structural device (as in neon), there is none of the formal predictability of much commercial dance music. Rather, the skewed proportions of works such as her recent LSO commission Tilting attest to her keen interest in applying structural principles found in the natural world, or the work of architect Zaha Hadid.
In 2005 the BBC SSO commissioned the trumpet concerto: Spiral House, and in 2006, the BBC SO and Zsolt Nagy performed (and recorded for broadcast) the orchestral work Tilting. In 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, and the Norwegian ensemble BIT 20. In 2008 a new orchestral work, Rift, was commissioned by the BBC Concert Orchestra and was recorded for Radio 3´s Discovering Music, for a programme featuring the music of Tansy Davies.
Current projects include a work for the BBC Symphony Orchestra, which will be premiered at the Proms in 2010.