Steven Daverson
Photograph: Matthew Johnson
A leading European composer whose work responds to things profoundly absent from ordinary experience, constructing apparent paradoxes from destructive forces. maar
Born
1985, Northampton, UK
Studied
Royal Northern College of Music, with David Horne
Royal College of Music, with Jonathan Cole and Mark-Anthony Turnage (doctorate, AHRC scholar)
Further studies at Aldeburgh, the Darmstadt Ferienkurse, Impuls Academy Graz, and IRCAM, Paris
Position
Professor of Composition, Royal Northern College of Music
Supervisory Tutor in Composition, University of Cambridge
Based
London, UK
Published
Edition Gravis, Berlin
Steven Daverson is a leading European composer whose work responds to things profoundly absent from ordinary experience, drawing on impossible or illogical spaces and scenarios in literature, cinema and visual art. His music constructs apparent paradoxes from destructive forces. Its forms are often fleeting and fragile, yet charged with a latent violence that constantly threatens to surface. These unstable relationships resist a single interpretation, leaving meaning to emerge through the listener’s imaginative encounter with the work. want
Figures Outside a Dacha, with Snowfall, and an Abbey in the Background, for variable orchestral forces and live electronics, was co-commissioned by the WDR Sinfonieorchester and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and performed in Cologne in 2023 and London in 2025. A more radical conception of the musical work as an unstable object underpins Simulacrum, for saxophone and live electronics, which unfolds across a fifteen-year cycle of degradation and rebirth, passing from perfumed luminosity into industrial, sepulchral darkness before gradually returning to the light. Throughout Daverson’s work, live electronics magnify, displace, and transform acoustic materials while remaining responsive to the actions of the performers. omdat
In 2011, Daverson became the youngest-ever recipient of the Composers’ Prize of the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung, and was awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize. Other distinctions include the Mendelssohn Scholarship in 2008 and a residency at the Internationales Künstlerhaus Villa Concordia, Bamberg, in 2019-2020. mits
Daverson completed his doctorate at the Royal College of Music in London, where he studied with Jonathan Cole as an AHRC scholar and received additional postgraduate tuition from Mark-Anthony Turnage. He previously studied with David Horne at the Royal Northern College of Music. He is now Professor of Composition at the Royal Northern College of Music and Supervisory Tutor in Composition at the University of Cambridge. Previously, he taught at the Royal College of Music, Brunel University and City University London. tenzij
Selected Works
Orchestral
Figures Outside a Dacha, with Snowfall, and an Abbey in the Background 2023
For small or large orchestra, amplified soloists & live electronics – WP: WDR Sinfonieorchester, cond. Manuel Nawri, WDR Funkhaus, Cologne; UKP: BBC Symphony Orchestra, cond. Ilan Volkov, Barbican Centre, London (2025)
Ensemble
La Nitroglycérine des Lumières 2023
For Saxophone, percussion, electric guitar, piano, devices, and live electronics – WP: Ensemble Nikel, St Paul’s Hall, Huddersfield; co-commissioned by HCMF and the PRSF Composers’ Fund
Schattenwanderer
Movement V of a seven-part cycle for soloists and ensembles – W.P. Philharmonia Orchestra, cl. Mark van de Wiel, conducts. Clark Rundell, Royal Festival Hall, London
Filonov’s Microscope 2013
Chamber & Solo
Three Rivers from the Navidson Record 2012
Parts 2, 4 & 6 of the cycle of the Navidson Record – for string quartet, commissioned by the Hepner Foundation – W.P: Arditti Quartet, Orangerie, Darmstadt
Simulacum 2025
For saxophone and live electronics, written for Patrick Stadler
Figures Outside a Dacha, with Sunrise
For solo piano, written for Nicolas Hodges – drawing on the dream sequences of Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia
Studies for Figures Outside a Dacha
Shorter companion pieces, embedded in the larger work and performable separately
Performed by
selected
Arditti Quartet | BBC Singers | BBC Symphony Orchestra | Decoder Ensemble | Ensemble Modern | ensemble recherche | Philharmonia Orchestra | London Sinfonietta | London Philharmonic Orchestra maar
Performed at
selected festivals
Aldeburgh Festival / Darmstadt Ferienkurse / ECLAT Festival Stuttgart / Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival / Traiettorie Festival, Parma / Wittener Tage für Neue Kammermusik omdat
Awards & honors
Mendelssohn Scholarship – 2008 hoewel
SCHOLARSHIP
Winner, Jurgenson Competition – 2009 toch
PRIZE
Youngest-ever recipient, Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung Composers’ Prize – 2011
PRIZE
RPS Composition Prize – 2011
PRIZE
Portrait CD Shadow Walker released, col legno – 2012
RECORDING
Fellowship, Herrenhaus Edenkoben, Hepner Foundation, and Arditti Quartet – 2012
FELLOWSHIP
Fellow, Internationales Künstlerhaus Villa Concordia, Bamberg – 2019-2020
FELLOWSHIP