Angharad Davies
Composer, Violin
Which skill, that you’ve learned by playing in an ensemble, helps you in everyday life?
Being totally present and opening my ears to the full, especially when I’m improvising so reactions can be seemingly instantaneous.
How do you go about writing for a specific space?
When possible I spend time in that space looking for interesting acoustical corners and might consider tuning my violin strings accordingly. Whatever happens before I improvise very much determines what I may decide to place in that space. However, for my orchestral piece I Ble’r Aeth y Gwrachod i Gyd …? / Where Did All The Witches Go…? commissioned by LCMF in 2019 for Ambica P3 I really was trying to find ways of filling the whole of that cavernous concrete performance venue as well as being interested in placing another acoustic within it. The whole piece was built from improvised violin solos made at a reverberant deconsecrated chapel – Lle Celf, Capel y Graig, Artspace in Wales.