Handel Street Projects
Gavin Bryars Ensemble: Chamber Works
Saturday 8 March 2025 at 19:00h, 6 Broadley Street NW8
Handel Street Projects is very pleased to be able to host another evening with Gavin Bryars Ensemble.
Bryars’ extraordinary life dedicated to music goes back to the mid 60’s when he was a bassist (one of the finest in British Isles) in the Joseph Holbrooke trio, alongside guitarist Derek Bailey and drummer Tony Oxley, while keeping up an interest in everything from Beat poetry, to the music of John Cage and Morton Feldman and the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Bryars taught university courses on Duchamp and Jasper Johns, he was a founding member of the famous Portsmouth Sinfonia (its members included Brian Eno, whose Obscure Records label would later release works by Bryars) but also performed with popular artists such as Tom Jones, Dusty Springfield, Alma Cogan, Vera Lynn, Dickie Valentine and Des O’Connor, among others. He also collaborated with many visual artists including Bill Woodrow, Tim Head, Juan Muñoz, with whom he wrote A Man in a Room Gambling (1992-2005) and more recently Massimo Bartolini. His interests are, in his own words, ‘search for some kind of middle ground’.
As a composer, Gavin Bryars is sort of a conceptual artist, thoroughly researching his work. For one of his early pieces The Sinking of Titanic (1969), he found out who were the musicians on board, what instruments they played and what music they performed when the ship went down. The music is difficult to classify. Bryars is particularly interested in the music for voice. Medea (1982-4), an operatic collaboration with Robert Wilson, being one of the first, to his fifth opera The Collected Works of Billy the Kid premiered in March 2018 as well as more than six books of madrigals. He won a 2018 Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance with The Fifth Century (2014), for choir and saxophone quartet. In 2024 Gavin Bryars was awarded the Innovation Award at The Ivors Classical Awards in association with the Musicians Union.
On this occasion we will hear an intimate programme focusing on Gavin’s instrumental laude, featuring soloists from his core ensemble, led by Gavin on Double Bass.
Tre Laude Dolce, (2007) evolves the Laude model, ritornello and strophe of the original vocal Laude, retaining the original format, while It Never Rains (2010) and Flower of Friendship (2009) extends the format itself, punctuated by pizzicato jazz-like bass solos. It Never Rains borrows its title from Beach Boys’ song It Never Rains in Southern California and English expression ‘it never rains but it pours’; Added Time, (2018) composed in Italy in summer of 2018 and premiered at Handel Street Projects on 7th December that year, features fine sustained qualities of James Woodrow’s electric guitar, a key element in the ensemble’s repertoire. Its starting point is a piece for solo vibraphone, played with two double bass bows, written for percussionist Evelyn Glennie’s 50th birthday. Dancing With Pannonica (2012) reminds us of his jazz roots with its reflections on pianist Thelonius Monk.
Concert Programme:
Lauda Dolce I
It Never Rains
Lauda Dolce II
Laude Con Sordino
Lauda Dolce III
Added Time
Dancing With Pannonica
Flower of Friendship
Performers:
Morgan Goff (viola); Audrey Riley (cello); James Woodrow (electric guitar);
Yuri Bryars (double bass); Gavin Bryars (double bass/keyboard)
‘My ensemble was started in 1986: though there were concerts earlier (1979) that consisted only of my pieces, a concert in Gent was the first time that it was called the Gavin Bryars Ensemble. Since that time it has taken many formations, chiefly because of changes in repertoire and because of the natural movement of players due to availability. Apart from very early pieces that sometimes need larger forces, the ensemble has evolved into its present configuration of low strings, electric guitar and often with singers for whom pieces have been written for their specific voices. And with the instrumentalists I now have a close-knit group who are wonderful musicians, but also with whom I have a special friendship. These are the people with whom I enjoy playing the most, and for whom I enjoy writing the most. Instrumentally it is characterised by a perhaps unique blend of strings with the electric guitar used chiefly as a kind of surrogate bowed instrument, its grainy sustains colouring the sound of the viola and cello.
There are some pieces that are, in effect, a portrait of the ensemble. In the mid-1990s The Adnan Songbook was such a piece for the ensemble of that time, and here The Flower of Friendship, and the smaller scale It Never Rains can be seen as contemporary portraits.
At times I expand the ensemble to make the Gavin Bryars Family Ensemble with the addition of my four children and they have played with me on many occasions over the last ten years. They were with me at the Barbican concert in 2023 and we have all performed together at Café Oto and a a recording of one particular performance was released in 2019. Just as my musicians form a kind of family, so too my four children are, in fact, my best friends…’
Gavin Bryars
We are so excited to be able to show on the night three new paintings by Jeff McMillan. They belong to the Texas Series of ten paintings that were exposed to the elements for a year in a cotton field in West Texas, just outside the artists hometown.
Handel Street Projects would like to thank the Starkmann family for their kind support.
