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 Brunei 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.

Davies has been commissioned by numerous world class ensembles and orchestras, including the London Sinfonietta, the Britten Sinfonia, the CBSO Youth Orchestra, the City of London Sinfonia, BIT 20, the Northern Sinfonia, a large-scale multi-media work - Elephant and Castle - for the 2007 Aldeburgh Festival, the BBC Concert Orchestra as part of their Discovering Music series on Radio 3, and a large scale piece for the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Wild Card, for the Proms in 2010.

Her work is performed internationally, by groups including the Cantus Ensemble, Grup Instrumental de Valencia, the Tiroler Ensemble für Neue Musik, Musiques Nouvelles, the Melos Ethos Ensemble, the Orchestra of Filharmonia Baltycka, the Israel Contemporary Players, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, the Orquesta Sinfonica de Chile, the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, and the Plovdiv Philharmonie at WMD/ISCM 2011 in Zagreb. In 2009 she received a Paul Hamlyn Award.
Recent performances include the critically acclaimed As with Voices and with Tears, a requiem for choir, string orchestra and electronics, to commemorate Remembrance Sunday in Portsmouth Cathedral, with the London Mozart Players. This work was nominated for the South Bank Show / Sky Arts Award 2011.
Spring 2011 saw the release, on the Nonclassicallabel, of Troubairitz, the first CD devoted entirely to Tansy Davies music, which has received great critical acclaim. A second disc, of larger scale works, is being planned for release on the NMC label in 2012.
Future projects include a collaboration with Norwegian choreographer Ingun Bjørnsgaard, and a piano concerto for the BCMG.

July 2011