Rhodri Davies is a harp player working within the field of free improvisation. He was one of the most prominent members of the London reductionist school of improvised music that was active in the late 1990s and early 2000s and which has been described as being "extremely influential over the last decade". Davies is also active in the field of contemporary composition where he has commissioned new works for the harp from leading avant-garde composers. He has also worked as an orchestral player and as a session musician for Charlotte Church and Cinematic Orchestra amongst others. He has appeared on over 60 commercially available recordings. He has created a number of installations and performances which involve destroying or disassembling the harp. In 2010 he was longlisted for the Northern Arts Prize and in 2012 he received the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award. He is a board member of the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and a trustee of the AV Festival.
Improvisation
Davies started playing the harp at the age of seven and went on to study with Hugh Webb and Sioned Williams. Writing in Coda magazine David Lewis described him as "the most radical" of the harp players working within the field of improvised music as "he approached as a sculptural sound object rather than as an established musical tool with a pre-designated musical role." Davies uses preparations such as wine corks along with a variety of beaters and resonators to tease out different timbres from the instrument. He sometimes employs an ebow to induce a harmonic drone. According to Davies, the reductionist school of improvisation with which he was associated in the late 1990s and early 2000s emerged as a result of "being disinterested in the busy, non-stop, energetic gesture playing. We associated that more with a link to free jazz, remnants of which were in Improv." Critic Ben Watson described Davies' playing as " Bailey's guitar writ large, the soundworld of Pierre Boulez shot through with the funk and low humour repartee of the improvisor ". His collaborators have included David Toop, Max Eastley, Derek Bailey and Evan Parker and he has long-term musical relationships with John Butcher and the groups The Sealed Knot, SLW, Cranc and Common Objects. In 2011 he was part of a group of musicians selected to represent the British improvised music scene in a festival entitled "Just Not Cricket" in Berlin which was filmed as the basis for a forthcoming documentary. Other improvising harpists include Alice Coltrane, Zeena Parkins, Anne Le Baron, Clare Cooper, Helene Breschand and Carol Emanuel.
Davies has had an interest in destruction and creation in relation to the harp which he has explored in several recent performance and installation works. In 2008 he collaborated with the founder of Auto-Destructive Art, Gustav Metzger, on a series of events under the title of "Self-Cancellation" which took place at the Instal Festival in Glasgow and Beaconsfield in London. His performance "Cut and Burn" involved cutting and burning the strings of a concert pedal harp and then restringing the harp. His installation "Room Harp" was exhibited at the Hatton Gallery in Newcastle's Great Northern Museum in 2010.
Selected Discography
Davies appears on over 60 published recordings. Besides those listed, Davies also appears on recordings by Charlotte Church, Cinematic Orchestra, Richard Dawson, Apartment House, Zeitkratzer, Otomo Yoshihide, Furt, fORCH, Chris Burn's Ensemble and Simon Fell's SFE. A full discography can be found at European Free Improvisation Pages. Solo
Trem, Confront Recordings
Over Shadows, Confront Recordings
Duo with John Butcher
Vortices and Angels, Emanem – split CD with Derek Bailey/John Butcher
