“Each of the five works inhabits a single intense emotion, which Davidson pursues with her own energy, like a life force, barely concealed beneath the surface.”
“Wēpan … is the recording’s highlight track; and while it is strangely, relentlessly sad, with the strings making eerie wailing sounds, it stills exults in the power that music has, transmits and confers.”
– Gramophone, 2024
“Tina Davidson, a composer known for her lyrical, emotional, and evocative music creates … lush and varied harmonic language, often blending traditional harmonies with contemporary dissonances. She creates harmonic progressions that are both complex and accessible.”
– Giorgio Koukl, Ear Relevant, 2024
Hymn of the Universe is a masterful blend of technical proficiency and emotional depth. Tina Davidson has created a work that is musically exquisite while also being spiritually uplifting. It significantly contributes to the choral repertoire, offering listeners a chance to transcend the mundane and embark on a musical and spiritual discovery journey.
– Adorjan Horvát, Staccatofy, 2024
“When it comes to beautifully crafted works that speak freshly through fundamentally familiar idioms, Tina Davidson is as persuasive as they come. The Hymn of the Universe is instantly appealing. Davidson subtly sets all the material to music that flows with a lyrical gracefulness. The choral writing is clean, clear and immediately communicative. In the closing passages, the choral writing reaches a radiant height so that the last sounds resonated in a suggestion of cosmic darkness.”
– Tim Smith, Baltimore Sun
“Tina Davidson is the very model of a post minimalist composer. That is not to say that her music is formulaic; indeed, it bespeaks a real artistic personality, creating a sensuous texture that can gradually move in a variety of directions – either to a more traditionally tonal gesture or to more rhythmically propulsive sections.</p
What distinguishes this music most for me is not so much this particular sound (seductive as it is) as the manner in which Davidson shapes the telling details within the texture. She has a gift to listen very closely to the microscopic moments in her music and imbue them with real individuality and substance.“
– Fanfare
“The freshest piece here was They Come Dancing, a 15 minute toccata written by Tina Davidson. Ms Davidson has a vivid ear for harmony and orchestral colors. Over sustained pedal tones and quietly pulsating bass patterns, diffuse harmonies – like out-of-focus Copland chords – sound forth and dance.”
– New York Times
“Music sometimes arrives in your life with an air of inevitability. You know you’re hearing something for the first time, but your brain seems to have been secretly waiting for it. The ultimate, paradoxical effect is that of a musical homecoming with a total stranger, which happened at the premiere of Tina Davidson’s new string orchestra work, Celestial Turning, at Orchestra 2001’s concert at the Kimmel Center.
Celestial Turning has a bedrock of quasi-minimalist cells of repeated melody and rhythm, over which terse gestures and graceful glissando’s unfold … the music’s sharp-focused clarity of vision gives it a sense of expressive imperative – the piece says this is the way it had to be.”
– Philadelphia Inquirer
“Tina Davidson’s compact disc, It Is My Heart Singing, is emotionally generous, genuinely uplifting music. Those who know Terry Riley’s post-minimalist string quartets will be particularly at home with Davidson. Her music is less trippy, and ostinato more vigorous and, in general, more concentrated with distinctly American syncopation and density of events. Davidson composes in discrete modules that are strung together with great intuition; she creates a continuous flow, which means the music feel less like a journey and more like a meditation.”
– David Patrick Stearns, Philadelphia Inquirer
“Leonard Slatkin led the orchestra in a specially commissioned ‘encore’ by the gifted Tina Davidson – Beyond the Blue Horizon. It is a lovely work – lively, jostling, somehow aquatic and orchestrated with clarity and precision.”
– Tim Page, Washington Post
“It is not enough that Tina Davidson goes into high schools and community centers and coaxes composition out of unsuspecting victims. She also remains a composer with a consistently persuasive voice of her own.
“For Paper, Glass, String & Wood, premiered at the Fleisher Art Memorial, Davidson employed not only a professional string quartet, but two others comprised of students. The idea was for the fledglings to play elbow-to-elbow with the pros, gaining experience in real music, and as more than one optimist has put it, perhaps consider music as a career option. Such acts of altruism rarely succeed in their dual mission. They mostly achieve their social goal; it’s the real-music part that gets lost in the process.
“But that’s where Paper, Glass, String & Wood is different. It is real music, with structure, mood, novelty, and harmonic sophistication – with haunting melodies that grow out of complex, repetitive rhythms.“
– Peter Dobrin, Philadelphia Inquirer
“Like an engrossing thriller, Tina Davidson’s chamber opera Billy and Zelda explores the mystery surrounding two deaths. Premiered by OperaDelaware, the work enthralled the audience.
Davidson intertwines the tragic story of a little girl accidentally abandoned in the snow by her mother and a young man whose life is cut short in war. More reflective than dramatic, Billy and Zelda unlocks family secrets as a narrator and neighbor uncover long-suppressed memories. The solo cello underlines the emotional shifts in the narration of Zelda’s story, and assumes a strong dramatic presence in the haunting reenactment of her death. Unfolding in a series of poems, the death of Billy reaches a musical climax in the parents’ anguished outburst over the loss of their son, before ending gently in an ensemble lullaby of transfiguring beauty.”
– American Record Guide
“Tina Davidson’s Fire on the Mountain was commissioned by the Network for New Music, and the network got its money’s worth, whatever the cost. Scored for marimba, vibes, and prepared piano, the piece is rhythmically driving, with fascinatingly simple yet lovely harmonic changes. Davidson prepared the piano by inserting screws and erasers into the string. It was intriguing to compare the sound of eraser-thwarted notes and that of the marimba. The percussionists manipulated the sounds of their instruments by hitting them with different implements – rubber mallets, soft mallets, and the hard-edged wooden sticks.”
But in Davidson’s case, the methods were not important; her music would be just as pleasurable if it were scored for a full orchestra or piano alone. The composer makes music satisfying by carefully managing tension and release; it’s being able to bring a sense of beauty and emotion to a strict organizational structure, a rarity in any age.“
– Philadelphia Inquirer
“And the no-school school declared itself with Tina Davidson’s Lullaby, a gorgeously gentle piece for variable solo instrument – in this case violin – and an accompanying group that wraps the solo lines in echoes and shadows.”
– St. Louis Post Gazette
Delight of Angels for string quartet is “a state replete with sweet tunes layered among the strings, fragments that circle in and out of consciousness, sustaining slender, shimmering textures.“
– Philadelphia Inquirer
“Tina Davidson’s Blue Curve of the Earth grows from a tiny pizzicato figure into a lyrical world that literally seems capable of embracing the horizon. It is a shamelessly lovely piece.”
– Community Digital News
