Marcus Davidson Promo2019 02 1

Foto: Øystein Haara

Marcus Davidson

He featured in September 2020 at the Bergen Kirkeautunnale (church music festival) with his concert Sacred Space, where several of his works were performed by Tabula Rasa vocal ensemble and organist Anders Eidsten Dahl, including the premier of Oh Great Spirit.

His work The Conscious Sky, premiered in Bergen in 2014, is a concert that blends space recordings and film, with vocal ensemble, percussion, sound track and Hindu texts. His work The Passing, which includes space recordings, was broadcast by Radio Deutschland for the CTM12 festival Berlin, and is now released by Touch.

Marcus featured in the Bergen International Festival 2012 with Bee Symphony, a collaboration with sound recordist Chris Watson, where recordings of honey bees are fused with human song. It was premiered at Queen Elizabeth Hall, South Bank in London 2009. Watson and Davidson’s second piece, Sea Polyphonies, which fuses vocal ensemble with sea recordings was premiered at Our Lady of Lebanon Cathedral, New York City, September 2012.

In 2016 he premiered with violinist Roger Huckle Standing Waves, a multimedia concert using a unique combination of Earth sounds and film, with the music of the west and eastern hemispheres. Their album ¨The Wave¨was released in 2019 with great reviews and was also performed at St. George´s Bristol with the Bristol Ensemble.

Marcus is a member of Spire, the Organ based project by Touch and has performed at festivals throughout Europe, notably Kontraste Festival, Austria in 2013, Bergen Kirkeautunnale festival 2013, Spitalfield Music Festival, London in 2012, and the CTM12 Festival, Berlin in 2012.

He has written and arranged for the London based a cappella trio Voice, who included his compositions on their albums Musical Harmony 2013 and Patterns of Love 2015. Voice premiered 2 new arrangements with cellist Matt Haimovitz in London July 2016.

Other recent commissions include film scores for British Film Institute DVD Fairy Tales – Early colour stencil film from Pathé, Hardingfele ensemble pieces for Osterøy Spel- og Dansarlag for Hardingfele ensemble, 4 Rhapsodies for solo classical guitar for premiered by Hallgeir Fiskaaen, May 2016, 4 Balkan Dances for flute and guitar by the Fiskaaen/Bøen Duo in February 2019 and settings of poems from Crow by Ted Hughes, premiered at the Borealis Festival 2018.

He has also worked in ballet and contemporary dance, composing and playing for London professional schools and companies, as well as Norway’s leading contemporary dance company Carte Blanche.

Marcus has lived and worked in Bergen, Norway since 2010. He is trying to learn to ski, particularly the bit where you successfully stop.