Angus Davison

Australian composer of chamber and orchestral music

Biography

Angus Davison composes music with “considerable poignancy” (The Mercury) and “an uncanny ability to capture the beauty of small things” (ClassikON). His recent music has explored topics such as the religious life of worms, thermonuclear fusion, and the true story of a bird that fell in love with a statue.

Angus’s music has been performed in Australia, North America, Europe, and in 2023 his work represented Australia at the ISCM World New Music Days Festival in South Africa. Performers of his work include the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, Omega Ensemble, and Michael Kieran Harvey among many others.

Angus holds a Master of Music from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music where he studied with Matthew Hindson. Alongside university scholarships, his awards include the TSO Student Composition Prize, Audience Choice in the 5th International Tampa Bay Symphony Orchestra Prize, and runner up in the Jean Bogan and Willoughby Symphony young composer awards.

He has been selected for all of Australia’s most sought after young composer programs, including the Layton Emerging Composer Fellowship, Australian Composers’ School, and  Cybec 21st Century Composer Program, and Omega Ensemble CoLAB: Composer Accelerator Program. He has also participated in Composing in the Wilderness, a summer school in Alaska.

Angus is from Hobart and now lives in Sydney. He is represented by the Australian Music Centre.

Featured Work

Reviews

  • "Angus Davison’s Lime Song...was my highlight of this half. Davison has an uncanny ability to musically capture the sweetness of small things...I felt like this song was a rare and generous gift from the composer."

    ClassikON

  • “Most impressive of all was Davison’s new work. It is an absorbing, multi-textured piece, with a clearly defined and satisfying sense of structure and line.”

    The Mercury

  • "Both technically accomplished and creative... (Davison's work is) clever, polished and with a great sense of colour and shape”

    Layton Fellowship Panel

  • “Magnificent … Davison gives plenty of space for each instrument and somehow manages to make them sound both independent and full... a respect for sound in itself.”

    CutCommon

  • “Attractive and inventive... (Davison's piece) leaves a strong impressions with buoyantly rhythmical outer sections enclosing a lyrical central episode of considerable poignancy.”

    The Mercury

  • “Davison’s work imagines the complexity of emotion held by animals beyond those we habitually attribute to them.”

    Limelight

  • "I'll never look at a cauliflower the same."

    Audience member