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US Premiere of Tansy Davies's Nature with the New Juilliard Ensemble

Sep. 08, 2016

US Premiere of Tansy Davies's <em>Nature</em> with the New Juilliard Ensemble

“The piano becomes an enormous moth,” Tansy Davies writes of the soloist in her recent piano concerto, Nature, “that prowls in the undergrowth, at the edge of a wilderness where man meets Nature or the Supernatural.”

Nature, which is scored for solo piano and 10 players, receives its US premiere performance on October 1 with Joel Sachs leading the New Juilliard Ensemble and pianist Andrew Hsu. The performance opens the ensemble’s season and takes place at The Juilliard School’s Peter Jay Sharp Theater.

The work was co-commissioned by the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group (BCMG) and the Oslo Sinfonietta and received its first performance in 2012 with composer/pianist Huw Watkins as soloist alongside the BCMG. In composing Nature, Davies took inspiration from Carlos Casteneda’s writings on shamanism. She elaborates:

What is the true nature of the piano in this concerto, who / what is she / he / it? Possibly a maenad: a wild woman, driven by the desire to connect the earthly and spiritual realms, led purely by instinct. Without expectations about how to behave, the maenad simply exists. In contact with her environment, she responds to her desires according to the logic of her soul, and of the realm she inhabits. The physicality of the piano is very important, at times becoming an athletic figure, running fearlessly through dense forest at night, invoking spirits.

For more information on Tansy Davies, visit fabermusic.com.

Tansy Davies
Nature (2012)
concerto for piano and 10 players
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20’

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