Sarah Davachi’s Otherworldly Solo Organ Performance Opens New Music Series

Sarah Davachi, a Canadian-born composer, musician, and performer blurs the lines between acoustic and electronic music, creating experimental pieces that explore the familiar and distant. She has been influenced by a variety of music ranging from medieval and renaissance to popular music. Composing primarily instrumental music that she records and performs herself, Davachi’s work dives into the intimacy of music and the lost properties of sound that live in the spaces between notes. Her minimalist but depth-defying style will have audiences mesmerized and questioning their previous conception of what music can be.

Davachi started playing classical piano at the age of six, before transitioning to composing and performing on the organ—along with a variety of other complex keyboard instruments including the harpsichord and synthesizer. In 2021, she was the National Music Centre’s Stingray Classical artist in residence, where she experimented with the vintage Hammond Novachord (1939) organ. Northrop is thrilled to have Davachi demonstrate the full range of colors that can be coaxed from our historic Aeolian-Skinner pipe organ. 

As a current doctoral candidate in musicology at UCLA, Davachi is committed to expanding her ability to understand and create transformative sonic experiences. Before pursuing musicology with a focus on timbre, phenomenology, and critical organology, she received a master's degree in electronic music and recording media from Mills College in Oakland, CA. Music has always come first for Davachi, acting as the primary motivator for her academic research. Her upcoming dissertation, From the Ruins of the Literal, will dissect how the arts and aesthetic experiences follow a path similar to that of a metaphor, which eventually lead to the emergence of new truths.

Davachi has a prolific track record of musical releases. Her latest album Long Gradus released in 2023 earned a 7.4 score on Pitchfork. She composed Long Gradus while in residency at the Composer’s Kitchen—a professional composition residency in string quartet writing, where residents are encouraged to expand beyond conventions. Long Gradus explores the range of psychoacoustics through sustained tones.

Davachi hosts a monthly radio show called Le Jardin on NTS Los Angeles. NTS is a radio organization that broadcasts from 50 cities, sharing artists with a broad audience of devoted music lovers. She serenades the airwaves of LA with a blend of rock, acid folk, early music, and experimental compositions of minimal, sympathetic sounds. Tune in!