Ahead of her performance, listening session, and discussion at Civitella on April 9th, 2026, we asked Caroline Davis (CRF 2025) questions via email about her new record Fallows via email.
Civitella Ranieri Foundation: Thank you for sharing the album with us in advance of its release on March 27th! Tell us about the title, Fallows.
Caroline Davis: The word fallow means several things, and the two definitions that relate to this album are: cultivated land that is left alone for a growing season to reinstate fertility and the other is a pale, light-yellowish brown color. I found rest and rejuvenation to be central to me making this album, and that color was everywhere on that land around Ucross in March [artist residency in Wyoming where much of the record was produced over the course of one-month residency in 2025].
CRF: What were you listening to, reading, watching, or seeing when you were creating the album?
CD: The sounds around me were a big part of my experience in Wyoming, that was first and foremost. But then here are some jams I remember playing a lot during that time:
Tamela Mann, “Greater”
Tamela Mann, Change Me
Steve Lacy, Saxophone Special
Steve Lacy, Cycles (1976-1980)
Steve Lacy, Solo at Mandara
Steve Lacy, Clinkers
Steve Lacy, Solo
CRF: Can you talk about how you came to the Mary Oliver poem that became a reference for your process? Why did it stick with you?
CD: Residencies always afford me with more time to sit and read, and poetry is at the top of that list. Because I was being held by the land there, I wanted to read her work, she’s always revealing more about our surroundings. This poem gives those invisible spaces permission to breathe. I loved feeling that our rest time is something subterranean but entirely important to our process.
CRF: Can you speak a little bit about how you used the samples on the record, also word-based? (E.g. “Cloudburst” features Connie Crothers; “She Know She Is Water” features Thich Nhat Hanh)
CD: In 2009 I was searching for a lot in my life, it was one of the most difficult years of my life for many reasons, so I decided to do a meditation retreat at Blue Cliff Monastery in New York with Thich Nhat Hanh. He is an author and philosopher I had been reading for many years, who helped me process through words. I wanted to honor his voice with a recording from the monastery. Connie’s musical voice has always been a strong part of my listening life. Fortunately I got to meet her and her voice became a comfort to me through interviews available to us all, though she is no longer with us. “Cloudburst” musically does that, comforts me, and so the pairing felt natural.
CRF: Many of the songs are also layered with electronic sounds/rhythms/melodies, and sax. Does one come before the other for you typically—electronic composition, or saxophone?
CD: During my days I would divide my time into acoustic sessions and electronic sessions, so it was more of a dedicated practice of both.
CRF: How does improvisation play a role in your compositions?
CD: On this recording, every song came from improvising in the space I was living at Ucross.
CRF: You have said you made the record in a zone wherein you forgot yourself and the expectations placed on you by internal and external forces. How did you find yourself in that zone? Any advice for the rest of us?!
CD: My best advice is getting out of the way of it!
CRF: Community is also a theme, in a way, woven into this record. You used Critter and Guitari’s Organelle, a processing and beatmaking-machine with open source forums, and produced much of the record while at UCross, another artist residency. How did these things have an impact on the making of this album?
CD: I love when stuff is accessible, doesn’t have a paywall. The sharing aspect of making art makes me feel like I can believe in something. It’s difficult these days with ongoing wars and genocide directed at people, Palestinians for one. Sometimes we use the word community without being able to be in it or see it, and that’s been something I look for.
CRF: Has the land you’ve been in and around had this kind of impact on your process before?
CD: No, this is the first time I’ve experienced more of an opening, but I also owe that to the amount of time I had in Wyoming.
CRF: There’s a sense of the spiritual woven through the midline of these songs. What do you hope listeners will feel or come away with upon listening?
CD: I wish for people to go somewhere while they’re hearing these sounds and to not have to classify it into anything, and that this way of listening becomes a ritual.
CRF: I have to ask about the aluminum can (used in “Underground,” the penultimate track). Where did this idea come from? Can you explain what capturing the sounds created with it + the saxophone was like?
CD: Preparation of instruments has been a long-standing tradition for many people, and one of my biggest influences for prepared saxophone has been/is Sam Newsome. He has given us the gift of possibility. The can was part of a bunch of everyday objects I had lying around. I tried many things but this was the most interesting to my ears.