Alan Davis was born in Birmingham in 1945. He studied the clarinet at the Royal College of Music (1963-5), read music at Keble College, Oxford (1965-8) and in 1970 was awarded an MA by Birmingham University for research on the music of Jacques Hotteterre.

A growing interest in renaissance and baroque music and historic performance practice led him to the recorder, and he has devoted most of his professional life to studying, playing, teaching and composing for that instrument.

As a performer he has worked principally with small ensembles including the Halcyon Ensemble, Borromini Ensemble and Trio Faronell, and with the harpsichordist David Ponsford. He has held recorder teaching appointments at Birmingham Conservatoire (1968-91), the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (1994-6) and with Birmingham Music Service (1985-2005).

He currently teaches at Chetham’s School of Music and in the Junior School of the Royal Northern College of Music, and is a regular tutor at The Northumbrian Recorder and Viol School and the South Bohemia Summer School of Early Music. He also continues to direct Birmingham Schools’ Recorder Sinfonia which he founded in 1979.

Alan’s interest in composition began in a very practical way as a response to a need for new study material for his recorder students. When in the mid-1980s failing eye-sight began to limit his ability to perform contemporary recorder works, composition provided a means of expressing his commitment to new music.

A period of informal study with Judith Weir and Howard Skempton has been a further stimulus and encouragement, and in recent years he has engaged increasingly in composition. He has written primarily, though not exclusively, for the recorder, usually in response to a specific request or performance opportunity. He enjoys the challenge of writing for children and amateur performers in a style that is both contemporary and accessible, and prominent among a variety of influences are renaissance polyphony, serialism, minimalism and modal jazz.