Tansy Davies

Tansy Davies studied at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and Royal Holloway. In 2004 neon – a gritty collage of twisted funk written for the Composers Ensemble – quickly became her calling card. Since then her music has been championed internationally by ensembles including the New York Philharmonic, Ensemble intercontemporain, and the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra and at festivals including Ultima, Présences, and the Warsaw Autumn. Her work has been inspired by sources as diverse as Zaha Hadid (the trumpet concerto Spiral House), Anselm Kiefer (Falling Angel for ensemble) and the Troubadours (the song cycle Troubairitz). Between Worlds, a response to 9/11 with a libretto by Nick Drake, was premiered by English National Opera in 2015 (directed by Deborah Warner) and won a British Composer Award. Recent works include Re-greening for singing orchestra – for the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain – and Forest, a concerto for four horns premiered by the Philharmonia under Esa-Pekka Salonen. Cave, a second operatic collaboration with Drake, was premiered by Mark Padmore, Elaine Mitchener, and the London Sinfonietta in 2018. Davies is an Associate Professor of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music, London and is Composer in Residence at the Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw for 2018/19.