Alan Davis

Alan Davis studied the clarinet at the Royal College of Music, read music at Keble College, Oxford, and gained an MA from Birmingham University for research on the music of Jacques Hotteterre. An interest in historical performance practice led him to the recorder, and he has devoted most of his professional life to playing, teaching and composing for that instrument.

He has performed extensively as a recorder soloist in both early and contemporary music, with ensembles including Borromini Ensemble and Trio Faronell, and in recitals with the harpsichordist David Ponsford. He has held recorder teaching appointments with Birmingham Conservatoire, Birmingham Music Service and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. In addition to his work at Chetham’s, he currently teaches the recorder at the RNCM Junior School. He is also a regular tutor at the Northumbrian Recorder and Viol School and the South Bohemia Summer School of Early Music, and he continues to direct Birmingham Schools’ Recorder Sinfonia which he founded in 1979. In recent years Alan Davis has been increasingly active as a composer, writing primarily though not exclusively for the recorder.