On 15 September 2021, Tansy Davies’ luminous and rippling Soul Canoe will feature as part of the Lammermuir Festival in a performance by Red Note Ensemble who co-commissioned the piece back in 2019. Johnathon Berman conducts. The concert takes place at The Brunton Theatre, Musselburgh and is programmed alongside James Dillon’s Tanz/Haus.
Davies’ 20-minute work was written in 2019 while Davies was Composer-in-Residence at the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam and has since been performed in Netherlands, UK and Germany. Davies scored the work for a mixed ensemble of ten players with her inspiration to write it stemming from a visit to an exhibition of the art and artefacts of Oceania. A Wuramon (or ‘Soul Canoe’ made by the Asmat people of West Papua) rekindled for Davies memories of an old dream of Amsterdam, long before she had ever been there, its canals eerily filled with empty barges.
View the score online here