Wednesday 13 May 2020, 7.30pm
Rhodri Davies / el. harp
Harald Kimmig / el. violin
Daniel Studer / el. double bass
Alfred Zimmerlin / el. violoncello
“The skill and subtlety displayed in this concert was, frankly, amazing, with a recurring sense of “how did we get here?” due to the incredibly organic way they gently massaged and manoeuvred musical sounds and materials.” – Simon Cummings, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, 2016
The Swiss-German String Trio Kimmig-Studer-Zimmerlin has the great pleasure to meet the outstanding musician Rhodri Davies during several concerts in England for a refreshing and surprising exchange. After playing for more than ten years with acoustic instruments the trio recently started to play with electric string instruments to explore new qualities of form, sound and material.
Kimmig-Studer-Zimmerlin performed at numerous concerts and festivals since 2009. In 2011 they released the first double cd “erzählend nah” with live and studio recordings. In 2017 the cd “Im Hellen” was following: “The quality is exemplary. It’s a really bold and clear musical vision” (Stuart Bruce). Meanwhile it was their special intention to exchange themselves with different musicians and dancers. John Butcher, Paul Lovens, Phil Minton, Elliott Sharp joined the trio. Projects with the dancers Lilo Stahl and Michael Schumacher followed. With John Butcher the trio has a regular collaboration. In 2016 they released the common cd “RAW”. In 2019 the cd “Kimmig-Studer-Zimmerlin and George Lewis” was released, the string trio supplemented by George Lewis on trombone and live electronics.
Rhodri Davies plays harp, electric harp, live-electronics and builds wind, water, ice, dry ice and fire harp installations. He has released four solo albums: Trem, Over Shadows, Wound Response and An Air Swept Clean of All Distance. His regular groups include: HEN OGLEDD, Cranc, a duo with John Butcher, The Sealed Knot, Common Objects and a trio with John Tilbury and Michael Duch. He has worked with the following artists: David Sylvian, Jenny Hval, Derek Bailey, Mark Fell, Kahimi Karie, Laura Cannell, Lina Lapelyte, Sachiko M, Bill Orcutt, Jim O’Rourke, Christian Marclay and David Toop.
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.
