Rhodri Davies (musician)

Rhodri Davies (born Aberystwyth, 1971) is a harp player working within the field of free improvisation. He was one of the most prominent members of the London reductionist school of improvised music that was active in the late 1990s and early 2000s and which has been described as being "extremely influential over the last decade".

Davies is also active in the field of contemporary composition where he has commissioned new works for the harp from leading avant-garde composers. He has also worked as an orchestral player and as a session musician for Charlotte Church and Cinematic Orchestra amongst others. He has appeared on over 60 commercially available recordings.

He has created a number of installations and performances which involve destroying or disassembling the harp. In 2010 he was longlisted for the Northern Arts Prize and in 2012 he was awarded a grant by the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.

He is a board member of the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and a trustee of the AV Festival.

Davies started playing the harp at the age of seven and went on to study with Hugh Webb and Sioned Williams. Writing in Coda magazine David Lewis described him as "the most radical" of the harp players working within the field of improvised music as "he approached [the harp] as a sculptural sound object rather than as an established musical tool with a pre-designated musical role." Davies uses preparations such as wine corks along with a variety of beaters and resonators to tease out different timbres from the instrument. He sometimes employs an ebow to induce a harmonic drone.

According to Davies, the reductionist school of improvisation with which he was associated in the late 1990s and early 2000s emerged as a result of "being disinterested in the busy, non-stop, energetic gesture playing. We associated that more with a link to free jazz, remnants of which were in Improv." Critic Ben Watson described Davies' playing as "[Derek] Bailey's guitar writ large, the soundworld of Pierre Boulez shot through with the funk and low humour repartee of the improvisor [sic]".

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