Career
Sarah Davachi is a composer and performer whose work is concerned with the close intricacies of timbral and temporal space, utilizing extended durations and considered harmonic structures that emphasize gradual variations in texture, overtone complexity, psychoacoustic phenomena, and tuning and intonation. Her compositions span solo, chamber ensemble, and acousmatic formats, incorporating a wide range of acoustic and electronic instrumentation. She is similarly informed by minimalist and longform tenets, early music concepts of form, affect, and intervallic harmony, as well as experimental production practices of the electroacoustic studio environment. [2]
Davachi's compositional practice combines an interest in electronic instrumentation with contemporary treatment of orchestral acoustic instruments. She is also described as a drone artist. "Part of her success," wrote Resident Advisor , “comes from her musicality: she approaches drone with a fetching, but never facile, sense of melody.” According to The Stranger, "currently, Davachi is the closest thing we have to a hybrid of Éliane Radigue and Terry Riley." [3] According to the Getty Museum, where she was invited to create experiential soundtracks to Robert Irwin's Central Garden, "Davachi is among the preeminent emerging composers and performers of electroacoustic music."
Her first full-length LP release, Barons Court, was released in 2015. The album presented an unusual combination of sonic synthesis and live performance, featuring vintage synthesizers, cello, viola and other instruments, aiming for a novel approach to beat frequencies and drones. [4] “Though she doesn't dumb it down,” wrote Resident Advisor , “this was experimental ambient music that almost anyone could enjoy.” [5] Her album Vergers was released in 2016 by Important Records, featuring only one electronic instrument (an EMS Synthi 100 synthesizer), plus violin and Davachi's voice. [6] In 2016 Davachi also released the album Dominions.
All My Circles Run, a suite of studies for solo acoustic instruments, was released in early 2017 by Students of Decay. "Like Brian Eno at his solo best," Pitchfork wrote, "it's the sort of ambience that doesn't flood, that hovers precariously somewhere between the conscious and the unconscious, barely-there and indisputably present." [7] The music on her 2018 album Let Night Come On Bells End the Day, was described by the Chicago Reader as "meditative" and "hypnotic." [8]
Gave in Rest was issued in mid-2018. [9] It was described by Tiny Mix Tapes as “cathedral-sized meditations,” recorded away from Vancouver during a trip through European churches and lapidariums. [10] The album's first single, “Evensong,” was released in July 2018. [11] Jon Pareles of The New York Times described "Evensong" as "an arc of mourning and mysticism, a patient crescendo dissolving into a haunted memory." [12] "Since 2013," wrote Noisey, "she's made music that tends toward slow-moving melodic gestures out of both synthetic and recorded instruments, often treated and edited with electroacoustic processes that emphasize their own stillness, but this new record is the first where she's been able to explicitly engage with these feelings.” [13] In 2019, Davachi released the album Pale Bloom, an acoustic suite of pieces for piano, reed organ, Hammond B3, violin, and viola da gamba recorded at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley, California.
In 2020 Davachi founded Late Music, an imprint within the partner labels division of Warp Records. In June 2020 Davachi published a collection of essays, titled Papers. [14] Her album Cantus, Descant, released in September 2020 via Late Music, [15] was recorded on six pipe organs across North America and Europe. [16] Davachi also released a number of EPs in 2020 and the double live album, Figures in Open Air. The album Antiphonals, recorded mostly using the Mellotron and Korg CX-3 electric organ, followed in 2021. In 2022, Davachi released the double album Two Sisters, featuring chamber music written for carillon, choir, organ, strings, woodwinds, brass, and electronics. She also released the double live album In Concert & In Residence.
Davachi also works as a musicologist, exploring organology, phenomenology, and timbre. Between 2007 and 2017, Davachi worked at Calgary's National Music Centre as an interpreter, content developer, and archivist. She has also lectured at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver Film School, UCLA, California Institute of the Arts, and held artist residencies at The Banff Centre for the Arts (Banff, Canada), Quatuor Bozzini's Composer's Kitchen, Swiss Museum & Center for Electronic Music Instruments (Fribourg, Switzerland), the National Music Centre (Calgary, Canada), STEIM (Amsterdam, Netherlands), WORM (Rotterdam, Netherlands), Elektronmusikstudion (Stockholm, Sweden), OBORO (Montréal, Canada), and MESS (Melbourne, Australia). [17] Since 2017, she has been a resident host on NTS with the monthly show Le Jardin. [18]
