Featured Composer: Tyson Davis

Tyson Davis began composing for piano at the age of eight. “I always hated to practice,” he says, “so often I would improvise on the pieces I was learning at the time. That led me to coming up with little short pieces of my own. I enjoyed the process so much that I started writing more and more…” 

Tyson entered UNCSA as a high school freshman, studying with Lawrence Dillon.  He has taken advantage of numerous opportunities at the school, writing for Eighth Blackbird, the Attacca String Quartet, UNCSA Cantata Singers and the UNCSA Symphony Orchestra. In the summers, he has attended Interlochen Summer Music Camp, where he had works for chorus and percussion ensemble premiered and earned the Fine Arts Award, and Curtis Summerfest, where he worked with David Ludwig and Jennifer Higdon. 

On November 19^th, Tyson’s had his prizewinning composition "Microludes" for chamber orchestra premiered on the MATA Jr. festival in New York. His music shows a keen ear for orchestral color and a predilection for modernist techniques. He says, of this interest, “over the last several years, music after 1910 through the present has become my main interest not just as a composer, but as a scholar/researcher of this time period that is often disregarded by the majority of classical musicians of today.”

 To see a sample score of Tyson’s music, click on the image below: 

 For a sound sample, visit the following: