Sarah Davachi

Sarah Davachi (born 1987 in Calgary) is a Canadian experimental musician and composer of electroacoustic and minimalist music. She is a pianist and organist.

She is a graduate of the University of Calgary and holds a master's degree in electronic music and recording media from Mills College in Oakland, California. She has resided in Vancouver and Montreal, before relocating to Los Angeles in 2017 to pursue a PhD in Musicology at UCLA.

Davachi's music has been issued by Late Music, Superior Viaduct, Ba Da Bing, Recital, and Important Records.

Career

Davachi's compositional practice combines an interest in electronic instrumentation with contemporary treatment of orchestral acoustic instruments. She is also described as a drone artist. "Part of her success," wrote ''Resident Advisor'', “comes from her musicality: she approaches drone with a fetching, but never facile, sense of melody.” According to The Stranger, "currently, Davachi is the closest thing we have to a hybrid of Éliane Radigue and Terry Riley." According to the Getty Museum, where she was invited to create experiential soundtracks to Robert Irwin's Central Garden, "Davachi is among the preeminent emerging composers and performers of electroacoustic music."

Her first full-length LP release, ''Barons Court'', was released in 2015. The album presented an unusual combination of sonic synthesis and live performance, featuring vintage synthesizers, cello, viola and other instruments, aiming for a novel approach to beat frequencies and drones.

In 2016, she played the Mutek Montréal Festival. “Though she doesn't dumb it down,” wrote ''Resident Advisor'', “this was experimental ambient music that almost anyone could enjoy.” That same year, her album ''Vergers'' was released by Important Records, featuring only one electronic instrument (an EMS Synthi 100 synthesizer), plus violin and Davachi's voice. In 2016 Davachi also released the album ''Dominions''.

''All My Circles Run'', a suite of studies for solo acoustic instruments, was released in early 2017 by Students of Decay. "Like Brian Eno at his solo best," Pitchfork wrote, "it's the sort of ambience that doesn't flood, that hovers precariously somewhere between the conscious and the unconscious, barely-there and indisputably present." In 2017 Davachi played the Mutek festivals in Montreal and Mexico.

The music on her 2018 album ''Let Night Come On Bells End the Day'', was described by the ''Chicago Reader'' as "meditative" and "hypnotic."

''Gave in Rest'' was issued in mid-2018. It was described by Tiny Mix Tapes as “cathedral-sized meditations,” recorded away from Vancouver during a trip through European churches and lapidariums. The album's first single, “Evensong,” was released in July 2018. Jon Pareles described "Evensong" as "an arc of mourning and mysticism, a patient crescendo dissolving into a haunted memory." "Since 2013," wrote Noisey, "she's made music that tends toward slow-moving melodic gestures out of both synthetic and recorded instruments, often treated and edited with electroacoustic processes that emphasize their own stillness, but this new record is the first where she's been able to explicitly engage with these feelings.”

In June 2020 Davachi published a collection of essays, titled ''Papers''. Her album ''Cantus, Descant'', released in September 2020 via her own Late Music label, was recorded on six pipe organs across North America and Europe. Davachi also released a number of EPs in 2020 and the double live album ''Figures in Open Air''.

Davachi also works as a music researcher, exploring organology and timbre. Since 2007, Davachi has worked at Calgary's National Music Centre as interpreter, content developer, and archivist. She has also lectured at Simon Fraser University and Vancouver Film School, and held artist residencies at The Banff Centre for the Arts ( Banff, Canada), STEIM (Amsterdam, Netherlands), WORM (Rotterdam, Netherlands), EMS (Stockholm, Sweden), OBORO ( Montréal, Canada), and MESS (Melbourne, Australia).

Discography

* ''The Untuning of the Sky'' (2013, cassette)
* ''August Harp'' (2014, cassette)
* ''Qualities of Bodies Permanent'' (2015, cassette)
* ''Barons Court'' (2015)
* ''Dominions'' (2016)
* ''Vergers'' (2016)
* ''All My Circles Run'' (2017)
* ''Untitled Work'' (2017, cassette)
* ''For Harpsichord/For Pipe Organ and String Trio'' (2018, CD)
* ''Let Night Come On Bells End the Day'' (2018)
* ''Gave In Rest'' (2018)
* ''Pale Bloom'' (2019)
* ''Horae'' EP (2020)
* ''Five Cadences'' EP (2020)
* ''Gathers'' EP (2020, cassette)
* ''Cantus, Descant'' (2020)
* ''Figures in Open Air'' (2020, CD live album)
* ''Laurus'' EP (2020, cassette)
* ''Antiphonals'' (2021)
* ''Mother of Pearl'' (2021, with Sean McCann)
* ''Two Sisters'' (2022)

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Davachi, Sarah
1987 births
Living people
Canadian electronic musicians
University of Calgary alumni
Composers for pipe organ
21st-century Canadian composers
21st-century women composers
Canadian women composers
21st-century Canadian women musicians