Fire And Ice-Listen to the Extraordinary Harpist Rhodri Davies!
Fantastic! The consistently extraordinary Rhodri Davies-long time supporter of LVOF and all round inspirer-is playing in our inaugural St Caron’s Well Festival of Folk and Strange Music
—yes, we are genre agnostic and these labels are unhelpful, especially with some one whose work spans so many zones….Rhodri is playing along with a host of great acts on Saturday in Tregaron’s new Bistro, Y Banc- so yes, cakes, food, fine coffees and probably other repasts can be had whilst you sit up close and watch dexterous hands create skeins of strong and strange music. Details to follow on the other stand outs coming to a sleepy mid Wales town near you….
But, not wanting to sound too desperate, part of this project-part funded by Ty Cerdd, was to show that there could be an audience of music curious folk in the region for this vibrant new music-and one located not in the central ‘usual suspects’ territories, those well served urban/larger town arts centre bases (mentioning no names…)….and I want to show those funders that there is an audience. If there is not then…come and be part of a one off speciality!
You can get tickets for Saturday in advance, and we really need you to come! Do yourself a favour: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/gwyl-ffynnon-sant-caron-st-carons-well-festival-tickets-243477316207
Rhodri Davies is immersed in the worlds of improvisation, musical experimentation, composition and contemporary classical performance. He plays harp, electric harp, live-electronics and builds wind, water, ice, dry ice and fire harp installations and has released six solo albums.
His regular groups include: HEN OGLEDD, Cranc, Common Objects and a duo with John Butcher. He has worked with the following artists: David Sylvian, Jenny Hval, Derek Bailey, Sofia Jernberg, Lina Lapelyte, Pat Thomas, Simon H Fell and Will Gaines.
For the last ten years Davies has been closely associated with the pioneering composer Eliane Radigue performing seventeen of her pieces. She composed OCCAM I for Davies in 2011, the first in an ongoing series of solo and ensemble pieces for individual instrumentalists in which a performer’s personal performance technique and particular relationship to their instrument function as the compositional material of the piece.
New pieces for solo harp have also been composed for him by: Christian Wolff, Carole Finer, Philip Corner, Phill Niblock, Ben Patterson, Alison Knowles, Mieko Shiomi and Yasunao Tone. In 2008 he collaborated with the visual artist Gustav Metzger on ‘Self-cancellation’, a large-scale audio-visual collaboration in London and Glasgow. In 2012 he was the recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Grants to Artists Award, he was a Chapter Associate Artist (2016-19) and in 2017 he received a Creative Wales Award. He is a co-organiser of the NAWR concert series in Swansea. www.rhodridavies.com