Angus Davison

Australian composer of chamber and orchestral music

Biography

Angus Davison composes music with “considerable poignancy” (The Mercury). Described as possessing “an uncanny ability to capture the beauty of small things” (ClassikON), Angus’s music for chamber and orchestral ensembles draws inspiration from diverse and unexpected sources. Recent works have explored the religious life of worms, promoted lime appreciation, and even summarised the history of Western Classical Music.

Angus’s compositions have been performed in Australia, North America, Europe, and South Africa. Performers of his work include the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, Omega Ensemble, The Song Company, Ensemble Offspring, and Michael Kieran Harvey among many others. In 2023 his work represented the Australian section at the 100th anniversary edition of the ISCM World New Music Days Festival.

Angus’s music has been recognised in international awards, receiving Audience Choice in the 2022 Tampa Bay Symphony Orchestra Prize and 3rd place in the 2025 Red Note New Music Festival Competition. Closer to home, his music has also received the TSO Student Composition Prize, alongside runner up placings 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, Cybec 21st Century Composer Program, and CoLAB: Composer Accelerator Program. He has also participated in Composing in the Wilderness, a summer school in Alaska.

Angus holds a Bachelor of Music from the Tasmanian Conservatorium of Music and a Masters of Music from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. In 2025, he was granted Full Representation with the Australian Music Centre and is currently one of the five youngest composers to hold that status. His music is available from the Australian Music Centre and from TSO Publishing.

Featured Music

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