Tina Davidson

Composer Tina Davidson has been active in support of women in music and on behalf of underrepresented urban communities. She has written music in a variety of genres, from choral to chamber to orchestral. Davidson was born on December 30, 1952, in Stockholm, Sweden, but grew up in Oneonta, New York, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She attended Bennington College in Vermont, studying piano and composition with Vivian Fine, Henry Brant, Louis Calabro, and Lionel Nowak. Facing discouraging comments from teachers and perceiving discrimination against women in the field of composition, she elected not to go on to graduate school. Davidson settled in southeastern Pennsylvania (she lives in Lancaster) and continued to compose. In 1992, she wrote a widely publicized article for Ms. magazine exploring the difficulties women faced in the world of classical composition. Davidson issued a group of her early compositions on the album Tina Davidson: I Hear the Mermaids Singing on the CRI label in 1996. She founded the Philadelphia chapter of the American Composers Forum and was its director from 1999 to 2001. From 1998 to 2001, she was composer-in-residence with the Fleisher Art Memorial. Davidson organized a festival, New Music Across America, that mounted events in 18 cities. Davidson's works have been performed by such major groups as the Philadelphia Orchestra, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the American Composers Orchestra. The National Symphony Orchestra, the Kronos Quartet, and the Minnesota vocal ensemble VocalEssence, among other groups, have commissioned new works from her, as has violinist Hilary Hahn; Davidson contributed a work to Hahn's In 27 Pieces album. She is the composer of a full-length opera, Billy and Zelda. Davidson has earned various fellowships, including four Artist's Fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts; she was also the first classical composer to win the Pew Fellowship, worth $50,000. In Philadelphia, Davidson created a Young Composers program that taught urban children to write music through innovative means such as improvisation and instrument building. She has created programs involving homeless women as well as urban elementary school students. In 2023, three of Davidson's choral compositions appeared on the album Tina Davidson: Hymn of the Universe. By that time, more than 15 of her works had been recorded.
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