Tansy Davies rose to prominence on the British scene with a sequence of ensemble works for the Composers Ensemble (Patterning), the London Sinfonietta (Torsion) and The Brunel Ensemble (The Void in this Colour), all of which bear the hallmarks of her apprenticeship under Simon Bainbridge and Simon Holt. In her recent work, Davies has found an accommodation between the worlds of the avant-garde and experimental rock, between - in the words of one critic - Xenakis and Prince. Filled with sounds of cracking, slapping, whipping and scraping, it is music that is utterly contemporary, inhabiting the same urban landscape as industrial techno and electronica, And while Davies is similarly fascinated by the potential of 'looping' as a structural device (as in neon), there is none of the formal predictability of much commercial dance music. Rather, the skewed proportions of works such as her recent LSO commission Tilting attest to her keen interest in applying structural principles found in the natural world, or the work of architect Zaha Hadid. Tansy Davies' recent works include Contraband for the Britten Sinfonia, Streamlines for the CBSO Youth Orchestra, Spiral House for the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Falling Angel for the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and Thomas Adès. Future commissions include works for the Norwegian group Bit20, the City of London Sinfonia and a large-scale, multi-media work for the 2007 Aldeburgh Festival. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.