Sarah Davachi - The Head as Form’d in the Crier’s Choir - The Will of Tongues

Sarah Davachi’s solo organ concert at Teatro Piccolo Arsenale brings together works from her 2024 album The Head as Form’d in the Crier’s Choir and her forthcoming album The Will of Tongues, to be released in August 2026. Collectively, this organ music illuminates Davachi’s ever-increasing interest in negotiating slow-moving harmonies and textures, especially within the context of a sustaining instrument that allows for exceedingly gradual changes to become observable across extended timespans. Throughout the works presented at this concert is a common thread of intervallic expression: each piece isolates a specific structure of pitch relationships (thirds, fifths, fourths, sixths, etc.) and explores how shifting articulations and voicings of these musical geometries can impact our emotions and perceptions. The organ that Davachi performs on is a unique five-register chest organ that typically serves as the continuo in Baroque chamber music. In the solo context of this concert, however, the intimacy of the organ’s architecture and the nuanced control of its direct mechanics are allowed to shine, complementing the timbral concerns that are at the heart of Davachi’s compositional practice.