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Gavin Bryars
Gavin Bryars, born in 1943 in Goole, Yorkshire, is the most provocative and original member of an unusually gifted generation of composers. He started his career from an experimental position rare in British music, and has continued to chart a radical course while attracting an international following. Nonetheless, he has remained steadfastly beyond the establishment -- and always several degrees ahead of it.
This pattern of subversion can be traced to his student days. While reading philosophy at Sheffield University he became a professional jazz bassist and a pioneer of free improvisation. The lessons of this influenced early works such as the indeterminately scored The Sinking of the Titanic of 1969 and the classic Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet of 1971. Though their conceptual nature was new to British music, it was thoroughly in keeping with Bryars' own creative concerns, combining an openness to experience with an imagination rich in powers of association.
A major turning point in his development was the opera Medea, premièred at the Opéra de Lyon and Opéra de Paris in 1984 in a production directed and designed by Robert Wilson. For the first time a large-scale structure gave an ambitious focus for his abiding musical interests: the nature of musical slowness, the role of memory, and the scope of the new tonality that also embraced a dramatic and innovative simplicity. These elements were developed more extensively in his second opera Doctor Ox's Experiment (ENO 1998). His third opera, G (libretto Blake Morrison), was commissioned by the Staatstheater Mainz for the Gutenberg 600th anniversary.
He has produced a large body of chamber music, including 3 string quartets, both for his own ensemble and for other performers. He has also written extensively for strings as well as producing concertos for violin, viola, cello, double bass (plus one for jazz bass).
An important feature of his output comes from his collaborations with the visual arts (he taught for a number of years in art colleges). He has made installations/performances for the Liverpool Tate Gallery, the Tate St. Ives, the Chateau d'Oiron among others and worked closely with the late Juan Muñoz, notably on A Man in a Room, Gambling.
Bryars has worked for many years with early music performers and has now embarked on a series of seven books of madrigals: to date three are finished for the Hilliard Ensemble (texts by Blake Morrison), for the Trio Mediaeval Sextet (texts by Petrarch) and for Red Byrd (texts Petrarch translated J. M. Synge). In 1999 he wrote the music for BIPED, the dance by Merce Cunningham, and he is collaborating with choreographer Carolyn Carlson on works for the Venice Biennale (2002) and for the Dutch National Ballet (2003). His most recent work, a double bass concerto (Farewell to St Petersburg) for Duncan McTier and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, was premièred in November 2002.
His work is widely recordedon Incus, ECM, Point, Philips, Argo, Clarinet Classics, Daphénéo, and more recently on his own label GB Records. Forthcoming projects include a new work for Cathie Boyd's Theatre Cryptic.