Earthworks, Tansy Davies’ percussion concerto for Colin Currie, will premiere at the Aldeburgh Festival with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and Kevin John Edusei on 19 June. Earthworks was commissioned by Britten Pears Arts and Residentie Orkest, and with the support of a private donor.
The concerto, around 25 minutes in length, takes inspiration from vast geoglyphs like the Uffington White Horse and the Acre structures of the Amazon rainforest, revealed by deforestation. The concerto imagines these massive glyphs as ancient language – a communication, perhaps, from our ancestors to the future.
It recalls an earlier work – the ritualistic, rhythmic Dark Ground for solo percussion, which Currie recorded on his own label in February 2025. Currie calls Dark Ground “stridently disquieting …it seems it could be a pop-style drum-kit that is to hand for the music, but conflicting sounds from another kind of place are never far away”.
As well as giving numerous performances of Dark Ground at venues including Wigmore Hall, Bold Tendencies, and the Sante Fe Chamber Music Festival, Currie presented Davies with the 2023 Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Works Collection, in recognition of her exceptional body of work. In his tribute to the composer, the percussionist remarked on an “uncanny ability to reconcile the edgier elements of pop and funk into vastly ambitious and immensely satisfying structures of truly classical sensibilities”, and praised Davies’ “self-taught style, originality and resilience”.
In 2021 the Aldeburgh Festival played host to the world premiere of Monolith: I Extend My Arms – a work for percussion and strings inspired by the photographs of Claude Cahun – and the UK premiere of Dune of Footprints in Snape, a 15-minute piece for strings inspired by the Cave of Niaux in southwest France.
Lost Science, another geologically-inspired work by Davies, receives its Australian premiere in June 2026 from Ensemble Offspring, who present the 23-minute work at the Carriageworks, Sydney (3 June) and The Street Theatre, Canberra (5 June), conducted by Clark Rundell. Details here.
Written for chamber ensemble and electronics, it 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. It was commissioned by Red Note Ensemble, sound, Crash Ensemble and Ensemble Offspring, and received its world premiere in October 2025 at Sound Scotland; in April 2026 it appeared at New Music Dublin, conducted by Ryan McAdams.