Press:

The Best Classical Albums of 2011:
5 - Nathan Davis, The Bright and Hollow Sky (New Focus)

Long a tremendous asset to the International Contemporary Ensemble as both a brilliant percussionist and a resourceful composer, Nathan Davis finally documented five of his sonically beguiling works, with predictably rich results.

To commence the [Tully Scope] festival Mr. Davis wrote a contemplative piece scored for winds and percussion, especially bells and chimes, but also for audience members with cellphones. The ICE musicians played from various positions in the lobby, including the high platform that juts out from the balcony upstairs. All members of the audience (and the place was packed) were given instructions at the door to dial a number on their cellphones and enter different codes to call up different sounds.  The written-out parts of the piece provided a calming aural backdrop of chimes, slowly rising melodic lines in flutes and clarinets, penetrating low rumbles on the gongs, metallic flickers on small cymbals. From the collective cellphones came a wash of vibrating tones, Morse-code-like ticks, intoned spoken numbers, patches of crackling static, cosmic shimmers and more. For an extended passage all the instruments dropped out and only cellphones were heard, including those wielded by the musicians, who wandered about the space... all a part of an alluring and pensive musical experience.

Nathan Davis gained citywide fame when his ear-bending piece Bells for winds, mobile chimes and cell phones opened Lincoln Center's Tullyscope Festival in February.

On the Nature of Thingness draws on texts by writers Zbigniew Herbert, Hugo Ball, Arthur Rimbaud and Italo Calvino to explore objects and the act of creation. The diverse literary sources bring wildly eclectic musical responses. The choicest setting has the singer declaiming Dadaesque nonsense accompanied by a chorus of twanging jaw harps, to wonderfully whimsical effect. Also arresting is the third section, in which lines from a Rimbaud poem are sung on one pitchover softly pattering guitar and metallic percussion.

 
Bells, a thirty-minute interactive ambient piece by ICE percussionist and composer Nathan Davis, opened the evening and formed a compelling three-dimensional sonic mobile.

[On the Nature of Thingness] included a hodgepodge of texts related to “thingness,” i.e., poetic and aesthetic attempts to explain metaphysical reality or non-reality, as the case may be, while exploiting the overtone possibilities of ordinary sounds.  The work is memorable not only for the thought it provokes, but for its sheer exploration of sonority. The opening movement, starting as it does at A440, begins almost as an expansive tuning session with the voice gradually darting in and out of the natural harmonics of the instruments.  One of the middle movements even features a romp of swinging jaw harps while the finale explores upper guitar tuning meets upper string harmonics with the human voice as the go between.

Reviews and profiles:

Musical America New Artist of the Month profile by Pierre Ruhe,
          September 1, 2011

NYTimes review of ICE composition portrait of Nathan at Le Poisson Rouge,
          June 1, 2011

NYTimes review of Bells, February 23, 2011

New York Arts review of Bells, February 23, 2011

Lucid Culture review of Bells, February 23, 2011

Classical Review on ICE at MCA, June 4, 2011

Atlanta Arts review of solo percussion + electronics concert, October 10, 2010

Blog posts:

Nathan muses on writing for the bassoon and on the nature of thingness on digitICE.