Oliver Davis' New Release SOLACE named Classic FM and Scala Radio's 'Album of the Week'
9th March 2021
‘SOLACE is a truly international album created during the 2020 lockdown. It involved working collaboratively, yet remotely, with soloists, ensembles and authors from all over the world. A year in the making resulting in a really unique project.’ – Oliver Davis
Released on March 5th, SOLACE is the sixth and latest album from British composer Oliver Davis and has been featured as both Classic FM and Scala Radio's 'Album of the Week'. Davis’ previous albums have reached the top 10 on both iTunes Classical and UK Specialist Classical Charts multiple times, receiving numerous five-star reviews and well over a million streams on Apple Music.
Recorded at the height of the international Covid lockdown, SOLACE, is a feat of both technological as well as artistic achievement. He explains how creating SOLACE differed significantly from the production of his other recordings: ‘I had originally planned the production of my sixth album in a similar way to previous albums, a method that had to be abandoned when social restrictions were enforced at the onset of the pandemic.
In addition to amending the production process, most of the repertoire I had originally planned to record was also going to need to be replaced owing to key artists and studios unable to be involved. It presented a huge logistical and creative problem, but also an interesting challenge. Would it be possible to create an album, largely orchestral based, without being in the same room as the orchestra and conductor? The only way this could be achieved was by recording the orchestra and many of the soloists remotely. During the lockdown period I had briefly worked remotely with the Budapest Scoring Orchestra, and that experience gave me the confidence to tackle this project.
I decided to create a template by recording all the principal elements first. I recorded all the key orchestral parts individually with five musicians and this enabled me to have enough control of these parts to then create a master chamber music version of all the orchestral pieces on the album. I then mapped out the exact tempos and dynamics in the orchestral scores and only then did I record the Budapest Scoring Orchestra on top of this chamber recording. In addition, many of the pieces were written for soloists who were based abroad and were now unable to visit the UK as planned. I therefore had to record their parts remotely and incorporate those recordings into the mix. I achieved this using the internet and recording studios and engineers all over the world, recording a violinist in Los Angeles, a piano duo in The Netherlands, a guitarist in Argentina and the Budapest Scoring Orchestra conducted by Péter Illényi in Budapest.
This painstaking process became a labour of love and has led me to appreciate the many benefits of being in the same room as the artist!’
Davis’ music lends itself well for use in dance projects. He is an active composer of ballet music and this new album includes Narcissus and Echo which has been choreographed by Vitor Luiz and directed by Sophia Kiapos for film. The dancers are Vitor Luiz and Tara Ghassemieh with cinematography by J Garrett Vorreuter and Sophia Kiapos, edited by J Garrett Vorreuter, Caitlan Deibel and Sophia Kiapos and words by Simon Littlefield (sung by Grace Davidson, Benedict Moriarty and Sam Brophy).