Manners Faber composer and performer Sarah Davachi has been awarded the 2026 Silver Lion by the Venice Biennale, in recognition of the Canadian composer’s distinctive body of electroacoustic work. The Silver Lion is given to an emerging artist, whether composer, performer, or ensemble, who has made an outstanding and innovative contribution to contemporary music. Past recipients include Dai Fujikura (2017), Sebastian Rivas (2018), Matteo Franceschini (2019), Neue Vocalsolisten (2021), Ars Ludi (2022), and Ensemble Modern (2024).
The citation reads:
Over the course of a decade and a half Sarah Davachi has built a body of works that meticulously and rigorously explores the close intricacies of timbre and time, redefining the listening experience in a practice that merges historical research, the phenomenology of perception and electro-acoustic experimentation. Her compositions, often founded on extended durations and of natural tuning systems, make the slightest variations in texture, intonation and harmonic complexity perceptible, foregrounding psychoacoustic phenomena and processes of gradual timbral transformation.
Davachi’s work occupies a territory in which the structures of minimalism, early music concepts of intervallic relation and affect, and the experimental production practices of the studio environment converge, often centred on the use of analogue electronic instruments and the pipe organ.
For the 2026 Biennale Musica, Sarah Davachi will present the world premiere of a new work for acoustic ensemble. Forthcoming projects include a new work for GBSR Duo, commissioned by Kings Place premiering in September 2026 – an immersive soundscape that will make special use of the d&b audiotechnik sound system in the venue’s Hall Two. In April 2027 she will join James McVinnie and the LA Phil New Music Group to premiere a new organ work commissioned by the LA Phil for their Green Umbrella series.
In addition to her acclaimed recorded output, Davachi has toured and performed extensively; her work has been presented by Southbank Centre (London UK), the Barbican, INA grm, Kontraklang, Elbphilharmonie (Hamburg DE), MoMA, and The Getty Institute. Commissioned and ensemble projects include works for The London Contemporary Orchestra, Quatuor Bozzini, Harmonic Space Orchestra, Apartment House, Ghost Ensemble and Wild Up. In 2020, she founded Late Music, an imprint within the partner labels division of Warp Records.