In June Ensemble Offspring give the Australian premiere of Tansy Davies’ Lost Science, presenting the work at the Carriageworks, Sydney (3 June) and The Street Theatre, Canberra (5 June), conducted by Clark Rundell. Details here.
The 23-minute work for chamber ensemble and electronics was commissioned by Red Note Ensemble, sound, Crash Ensemble and Ensemble Offspring; it received its world premiere in October 2025 at Sound Scotland and made its Irish debut in April at New Music Dublin, conducted by Ryan McAdams.
Lost Science is an imaginary journey into the Earth’s interior, dwelling in a space between the Earth’s surface as we know it and older geophysical layers. These interior spaces speak to us in moans, groans, echoes and whispers; the voice of Earth: secrets of her ‘deep time’ structure, and of the pains of the transformation she is undertaking now. Davies calls the electronics “an ancient landscape”, traversed by the instrumentalists.
The work proceeds through eleven cycles – visions of the “Divine Feminine” manifested in a host of figures: Joan of Arc, Green Tara, Mary Magdalene, Hathor, Isis, and Quan Yin. They act as guides through this geological interior. Delving into the earth’s interior has been a longstanding source of creative fascination in Davies’ work, providing the framework her 2018 chamber opera created for Mark Padmore, Elaine Mitchener, and the London Sinfonietta.
Offspring previously gave the Australian premiere of Davies’ Yoik II (2021) for flute as part of ‘Avant Gardens 1’ in Sydney, which saw the ensemble head into private homes for intimate performances. The 7-minute piece alternates fluid material with more stuttering passages. “I had a vision of flying with a skein of geese”, Davies writes, “the fluid material is how I imagined it might feel to belong to a large group of these birds in mid-flight, aerodynamic and high above the earth…The stuttering passages are an urgent communication, as if from adult birds to their young who are dispersing from the group: calling them back into the fold.”