Hugh Davies

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Hugh Seymour Davies (born April 23, 1943 in Exmouth , England , † January 1, 2005 in London ) was a British musician and composer of new and improvised music . He was one of the pioneers of electroacoustic music .

Live and act

As a teenager, Davies bought Karlheinz Stockhausen's “Gesang der Jünglinge” as a record and dealt with Stockhausen's tonal language. After attending Westminster School , he studied music at Oxford University from 1961 to 1964, as well as music history, harmony and counterpoint with Frank Harrison and Edmund Rubbra . He then worked for two years in Cologne as Karlheinz Stockhausen's personal assistant. As a member of its music ensemble, he was involved in the recording of “Mikrophonie I” and got to know the method of using contact microphones developed by the WDR sound engineer Jaap Spek and Stockhausen. He then cataloged all recordings of electronic music available at the time for the Groupe de Recherches Musicales of French radio . In 1967, Davies began using contact microphones to convert found objects into electronically amplified musical instruments. So he developed the "Shozyg"; it consisted of various reinforced objects installed in a volume of an encyclopedia comprising words from "Sho" to "Zyg". In the same year Davies founded Goldsmith's College Studio of Electronic Music at the University of London , which he headed until 1986 (after which he worked there as a consultant until 1999). Since 1986 he has been advising the department for electronic musical instruments at the Gemeentelijk Museum in The Hague . From 1999 he taught and researched at Middlesex University .

Together with Derek Bailey , Evan Parker and the percussionist Jamie Muir , Davies founded the Music Improvisation Company in 1968 , the first record of which was released by the German ECM label in late 1969 . He also worked with the electronic live ensemble Gentle Fire . During the 1970s he was part of the Artist Placement Group .

In 1982 Davies was co-founder and until 1986 secretary of the Confédération Internationale de la Musique Électroacoustique . He composed for conventional instruments, but mainly dealt with electronic music (live and on tape). He wrote works for contemporary music theater as well as for amplified instruments he invented, which were also used for sound sculptures and installations. He often performed solo. Occasionally he played in an improvisational trio with Roger Turner and John Russell . He also appeared in a duo with Hans-Karsten Raecke and Max Eastley . There was also a collaboration with Bailey, Fred Frith , the London Improvisers Orchestra and the pop band Talk Talk ( Spirit of Eden , 1988). He was involved in the world premiere of Jonathan Harvey's Madonna of Winter and Spring . He can be heard as a singer on Phil Minton's and Veryan Weston's Songs from a Prison Diary . He also worked with Borbetomagus .

Selected discography

  • Performances 1969-77 (1969-1977, another timbre)
  • Shozyg: Music for Invented Instruments (1982, FMP / SAJ )
  • Interplay (1996/97, fmr) with John Russell & Roger Turner or Max Eastley, Hans-Karsten Raecke or Hilary Jeffrey
  • Warming Up With the Iceman (2001, Grob)

Web links

proof

  1. ↑ In 1968 this International Electronic Music Catalog was published by MIT Press.
  2. ↑ This record has not been in the label's program for a long time. See also Music Improvisation Company 1968–1971, Incus
  3. ^ Tate Gallery Artist Placement Group ( Memento from May 13, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Davies, Hugh
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Davies, Hugh Seymour
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British composer, improviser and musicologist
DATE OF BIRTH April 23, 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH Exmouth (Devon)
DATE OF DEATH January 1, 2005
Place of death London