My Performing Career

Miranda (Mimi) Davis comes from a very musical family. She started playing the violin at the age of 5 and later switched to the viola, age 9. She went on to study at the Royal College of Music, London, where she won many prizes – the Cecil Aronowitz, Margot Stebbing and Ernest Tomlinson prizes for viola playing, the Leverhulme Prize for chamber music and the Percy Buck Award for overall achievement.

In her final year at the Royal College of Music she was awarded a Britten-Pears Scholarship to take part in master classes at Snape Maltings with William Pleeth and Daniel Benjamini. She continued her studies under the latter in Tel Aviv, Israel, as a post-graduate, having won Scholarships to do so from the Martin Musical Foundation and the Countess of Munster Trust. On returning from Israel, at the age of 23, she was offered a position with the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO), making her one of the youngest ever members to join.  She remained a member of the LPO for the next seven years.

Since leaving the LPO, she has had a varied career as a free-lance musician working with both classical and pop musicians in some of the most famous concert halls and recording studios in the world. She has worked regularly with all the major orchestras in London including The English Chamber Orchestra, the Philharmonia, the BBC Symphony,  the BBC Concert Orchestra and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

Working and touring the world with these orchestras has given her the opportunity to not only perform with, but hear and watch up close most of the world’s finest violin & viola soloists such as; Pinchas Zukerman, Itzhak Perlman, Joshua Bell, Julia Fischer, Maxim Vengerov, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Janine Jansens, Nicola Benedetti, Nigel Kennedy, Yuri Bashmet, Tabea Zimmerman & Lawrence Power – to name but a few.

She has also recorded chamber music with the Ceruti Ensemble for the Guild Music Record label – notably the chamber works of Malcolm Arnold – and played in West End Shows such as ‘The Sound of Music’ and the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, ‘Love Never Dies’.

In studios such as Abbey Road and Air Lyndhurst in London she has played on many film and TV scores such as ‘The Mission’, ‘Lord of the Rings’ and ‘Downton Abbey’. She has worked alongside popstars such as Robbie Williams & Nick Cave, jazz musicians such as Lalo Schifrin and Michel Legrand as well as popular singers such as Lesley Garrett, Charlotte Church, Catherine Jenkins & Il Divo.

Mimi continues to work as a session musician and particularly enjoys playing chamber music together with her partner Nicholas Carpenter, one of the finest clarinet players in the UK.