Miranda Whall

Photo courtesy of Capel y Craig

https://soundcloud.com/miranda-whall/angharad-davies

Angharad Davies is a Welsh violinist working with free-improvisation, compositions and performance.

Her approach to sound involves attentive listening and exploring beyond the sonic confines of her instrument, her classical training and performance expectation.

Much of her work involves collaboration. She has long standing duos with Tisha Mukarji, Dominic Lash and Lina Lapelyte and plays with Apartment House, Cranc, Common Objects, Richard Dawson’s band and Skogen.  She has been involved in projects with Tarek Atui, Tony Conrad, Laura Cannell, Jack McNamara, Eliane Radigue, Juliet Stephenson and J.G.Thirlwell.

Her album Ffansïon | Fancies was voted in the top 12 albums for Radio 3’s Late Junction.

I asked Angharad:

 What aspect of the landscape inspired your composition

How did you approach writing the composition

How did you approach playing the composition

How did you approach recording the composition

What technical, structural, formal aspects of the composition are specifically interesting

She replied:

The struggle to get to the exact spot and it’s rugged remoteness. The emptiness, forlorn feeling of the once thriving lead mines. The imagined sounds of the lead mines. Passing through the forestry commission and that feeling of being watched but exhilaration and awe in discovering such ravishing beauty.

I made a series of experimentations using the acoustic of the Capel y Craig, Art Space, Furnace, West Wales as the guide. This composition is one of those. There is something about the vastness of the Capel’s acoustics that reminds me of the emptiness, once touched nature of the landscape around Cwmystwyth.

Recalling my visit to the landscape and visualising it as much as possible. Trying to inhabit the physicality of being in that landscape and allowing that to come through.

I don’t have enough knowledge or the equipment for a sophisticated recording set up so, a simple digital Roland recorder was used and trust that the Capel acoustic would play it’s part in shaping the composition.

The violin is tuned to optimise the Capel’s acoustics. As much as possible I allow the sound to guide the structure of the piece. Technically I welcome what might be termed imperfect sounds, tuning or technique and work with them rather than viewing them as mistakes. I approach sound as a sculpture. I really feel as if I’m building something – shaping it so that it makes sense musically.