Browse by Artist: BRYARS, GAVIN

Artist:	BRYARS, GAVIN
Title:	The Marvellous Aphorisms of Gavin Bryars: The Early Years
Label:	MODE
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	MODE 177CD

Performed by Seth Josel, Ulrich Krieger and others. "Gavin Bryars' (b.1943) music, post 'The Sinking of the Titanic' and 'Jesus' Blood...,' is well-known and often performed today. Less known are the earlier works featured on this CD, created during the years 1969-'7I. At that time, Bryars became associated with Michael Nyman, John Tilbury and Brian Eno -- marrying ideas from Cage, Fluxus, free improvisation and experimentalism. Some of these works appeared on Eno's avant-garde Obscure label in the mid-1970s. The notation of Pre-Mediaeval Metrics consists of pairs of phrases arranged in four columns on eight pages. Each phrase is made up of four symbols, either dashes ('an appreciable duration (at least one second)', instructs the score) or dots ('as short as possible'). Instrumentation is free but all instruments use only one sound throughout. 'Made in Hong Kong' is scored for '...toys, mechanically operated, manually operated, toy sustaining instruments and any other considered usable.' Its humorous and cacophonous sound is an homage to the countless toys for children, commonly made at that time in Hong Kong. In '1, 2, 1-2-3-4,' the musicians listen to the same music on individual cassette tapes through headphones, playing along with what they hear rather than responding to each other. The audience hears the collective product of this private listening. In this realization, the performers respond to a collection of songs by The Beatles! 'The Squirrel and The Ricketty Racketty Bridge' was written for guitarist Derek Bailey. The guitarist has to play two guitars simultaneously, placed flat on their backs, using a hammer technique which produces a pair of notes with the side of the finger. One hand plays constant quavers. like a bassist in conventional jazz, with two fingers across pairs of frets while the other plays isolated notes and phrases, like a lazy soloist. Liner notes by Christopher Fox with Gavin Bryars."

Artist:	BRYARS, GAVIN
Title:	The Sinking of the Titanic (1969-)
Label:	TOUCH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	TONE 034CD

Performed by Gavin Bryars (double bass), Philip Jeck (turntables) and Alter Ego (strings, brass, wind, percussion, keyboard, tape recorder and sound design). This version of UK composer Gavin Bryars' seminal piece, The Sinking of the Titanic, was recorded at the 49th International Festival of Contemporary Music at The Venice Biennale, October 1, 2005 at the Teatro Maliban. The Sinking of the Titanic is an open semi-aleatoric work written in 1969 and Bryars has developed versions of variable length (from 15 minutes to an hour) that have been performed in different contexts, both as sound installation and as a real concert work. The piece has its origins in an obsession (one in which Bryars meditates on the famous ship's sinking), whose evidence is in a minute handwritten notebook. This brings together information, curiosities, evidence, statistical data on the survivors, technical research on the ship, on the places occupied by the passengers, on projects for the wreck's recovery. This sinking is then a metaphor for the failure of modern technology, of the paradox of modernity, the fact that a super-technological ship could have been rammed and sunk by a block of ice. The version proposed by Alter Ego (a contemporary music group based in Rome, Italy) and Gavin Bryars is an absolutely new approach for the project and for multimedia installation. The other important new figure in this version is Philip Jeck, one of the most important names on the experimental scene. Jeck uses his experience to cover the sound with a blanket of thin dust, which, at the same time, is memory, distance, hallucination, traveling and anxiety. The dust which comes from the obsessive repetition of a short phrase and its melancholy is part of a harmony that Jeck shares with Bryars that succeeds in freezing time in another dimension. This is another important aspect of the Titanic idea: one related to memory and to lifetime, to concreteness and abstraction meant as a metaphor for the journey between life and death, the ocean's surface and depth. Gavin Bryars (double bass); Philip Jeck (turntables); Alter Ego (strings, brass, wind, percussion, keyboard, tape recorder and sound design). Limited edition of 2000 CD in a special wallet + postcard [postcard image by media artist Andrew Hooker]. Artwork by Jon Wozencroft.

Previous Page Index of Artists Next Page