Named after the only part of the Model T engine that Henry Ford supposedly found never wore out, Tansy Davies's kingpin doesn't so much conjure a vision of gleaming steel and laser precision, but one of grey steam and black oil, metal teeth spinning and biting, and power forced out through circular motion. Rhythms and melodies push and pull against one another, now and again finding harmony and peace. But the machines are always moving, always turning in this 6-minute work for chamber orchestra, and nothing can stay still. 'The music wheeled around at conflicting speeds, clanking, tootling and chortling away until the final upbeat ``kerplunk''. With Davies, contemporary music never lives in an airtight box. It's out on the street, mingling with rock without ever losing the poise that stems from the right number of notes in the right place.' The Times (Geoff Brown), 26 April 2007

Between Worlds, the highly anticipated operatic debut from Tansy Davies to a libretto by Nick Drake, opens at London's Barbican Theatre on 11 April. A bold and highly individual response to the events of 9/11, the opera, commissioned by English National Opera, brings Davies and Drake together with acclaimed director Deborah Warner. A disparate group of individuals is trapped high up in one of the Twin Towers, caught between earth and heaven, life and death. As the work progresses it opens out to a universal panorama of human beings in extremis. Drake's libretto deftly weaves together a wide variety of texts, from actual communications sent on the morning of 9/11 to passages from the Latin Requiem Mass.

An exhilarating collage of twisted modernist funk, neon is one of Tansy Davies's most frequently performed works. The 10-minute work for an ensemble of 7 players sets interlocking textures against each other creating, in the words of one critic 'an improbable balancing act between pulsating dance music and ultra-refined urbanity.' 'A gloriously offbeat scherzo made from "distressed" materials.' The Sunday Times (Paul Driver) 27 February 2005