Gavin Bryars
Background information
Birth name	Richard Gavin Bryars
Born	1943
Origin	Yorkshire, England
Occupation(s)	Composer

Richard Gavin Bryars (born 1943) is an English composer and double bassist. He has been active in (or has produced works in) many varied styles of music, including jazz, free improvisation, minimalism, experimental music, avant-garde, neoclassicism, and ambient. Image File history File links Gavin_Bryars. ... 1943 (MCMXLIII) was a common year starting on Friday (the link is to a full 1943 calendar). ... Look up Yorkshire in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Motto: (French for God and my right) Anthem: God Save the King/Queen Capital London Largest city London Official language(s) English (de facto) Unification    - by Athelstan AD 927  Area    - Total 130,395 km² (1st in UK)   50,346 sq mi  Population    - 2005 est. ... A composer is a person who writes music. ... 1943 (MCMXLIII) was a common year starting on Friday (the link is to a full 1943 calendar). ... Motto: (French for God and my right) Anthem: God Save the King/Queen Capital London Largest city London Official language(s) English (de facto) Unification    - by Athelstan AD 927  Area    - Total 130,395 km² (1st in UK)   50,346 sq mi  Population    - 2005 est. ... A composer is a person who writes music. ... Side and front views of a modern double bass with a French bow. ... Jazz is a musical art form that originated in New Orleans at around the start of the 20th century. ... Free improvisation or free music is improvised music without any rules beyond the taste of the musicians involved, and not in any particular style. ... Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is stripped down to its most fundamental features and core self expression. ... Experimental music is any music that challenges the commonly accepted notions of what music is. ... A work similar to Marcel Duchamps Fountain Avant garde (written avant-garde) is a French phrase, one of many French phrases used by English speakers. ... Neoclassicism (sometimes rendered as Neo-Classicism or Neo-classicism) is the name given to quite distinct movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture. ... Ambient music is a loosely defined musical genre that incorporates elements of a number of different styles - including jazz, electronic music, new age, rock and roll, modern classical music, reggae, traditional, world and even noise. ...

History

Born in Goole, East Riding of Yorkshire, England, Bryars initially studied philosophy at Sheffield University before studying music for three years. The Goole skyline showing the docks and the salt and pepper pots - the twin water towers Goole is a town and port located on the River Ouse in the East Riding of Yorkshire, in northeast England. ... The East Riding of Yorkshire is a local government district with unitary authority status, and a ceremonial county of England, in the United Kingdom. ... Motto: (French for God and my right) Anthem: God Save the King/Queen Capital London Largest city London Official language(s) English (de facto) Unification    - by Athelstan AD 927  Area    - Total 130,395 km² (1st in UK)   50,346 sq mi  Population    - 2005 est. ... Socrates (central bare-chested figure) about to drink hemlock as mandated by the court. ... University of Sheffield Rerum Cognoscere Causas (To discover the causes of things) Shield image © University of Sheffield The University of Sheffield is a university located in Sheffield, England. ... Music is a form of art that involves organized and audible sounds and silence. ...

The first musical work for which is he remembered was his role as bassist in the trio Joseph Holbrooke, alongside guitarist Derek Bailey and drummer Tony Oxley. The trio began by playing relatively traditional jazz before moving into free improvisation. However, Bryars became dissatisfied with this when he saw a young bassist (later revealed to be Johnny Dyani) play in a manner which seemed to him to be artificial, and he became interested in composition instead. Joseph Holbrooke was a musical trio active in the United Kingdom (particularly in and around Sheffield) in the 1960s, and briefly re-formed in 1998. ... Derek Bailey pictured at the Vortex Club, Stoke Newington, 1991. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Jazz is a musical art form that originated in New Orleans at around the start of the 20th century. ... Free improvisation or free music is improvised music without any rules beyond the taste of the musicians involved, and not in any particular style. ... Johnny Mbizo Dyani (30 November 1945 – 24 October 1986) was a South African jazz double bassist who played with such musicians as Don Cherry, Steve Lacy and Leo Smith. ...

Bryars's first works as a composer owe much to the so-called New York School of John Cage (with whom he briefly studied), Morton Feldman, Earle Brown and minimalism. His first known work as a composer, The Sinking of the Titanic (1969), is quite an indeterministic work which allows the performers to take a number of sound sources related to the sinking of the RMS Titanic and make them into a piece of music. The 1994 recording of this piece was made famous to a whole new audience via its promo single featuring the Aphex Twin remix "Raising the Titanic" (later collected on his 26 Mixes for Cash album). John Cage For the character of John Cage from the TV show Ally McBeal see: John Cage (Character) John Milton Cage (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American experimental music composer, writer and visual artist. ... Morton Feldman (born January 12, 1926, died September 3, 1987) was an American composer. ... Earle Brown (December 26, 1926 – July 2, 2002) was an American composer. ... Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is stripped down to its most fundamental features and core self expression. ... Aleatoric (or aleatory) music or composition, is music where some element of the composition is left to chance. ... RMS Titanic was an Olympic class passenger liner that collided with an iceberg and sank in 1912. ... Aphex Twin (Richard David James, born August 18, 1971 in Limerick, Ireland) is an electronic music artist, credited with pushing forward the genres of techno, ambient, acid, and drum and bass. ... 26 Mixes for Cash is a compilation album, composed essentially of mixes for various artists (plus four original tracks) all remixed by Richard D. James, better known by his recording alias of Aphex Twin. ...

A well known early work is Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet (1971), which has as its basis a recorded loop of a tramp improvising a hymn of that name. On top of that loop, rich harmonies played by a live ensemble are built, always increasing in density, before the whole thing gradually fades out. A new recording of this work was made in the 1990s with Tom Waits singing along with the original recording of the tramp during the final section. Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet is a piece of music composed by Gavin Bryars in 1971. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... Look up Lee Thirlwell in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... A hymn is a type of song, usually religious, specifically written for the purpose of praise, adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a god or other religiously significant figure. ... Harmony is the result of polyphony (more than one note being played simultaneously). ... A musical ensemble is a group of two or more musicians who gather to perform music. ... Germans dancing on the Berlin Wall in late 1989, the symbol of the cold war divide falls down as the world unites in the 1990s. ... Thomas Alan Waits (born December 7, 1949) is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor. ...

Bryars was a founding member of the Portsmouth Sinfonia, an orchestra whose membership consisted of performers who "embrace the full range of musical competence" - and who played (or attempted to play) popular classical works. Its members included Brian Eno, whose Obscure Records label would subsequently release works by Bryars. In one of the first three releases from the label, Brian Eno's album Discreet Music, Bryars conducted and co-arranged the three pieces "Three Variations on the Canon in D Major by Johann Pachelbel" which constitute the second half of the album. The Portsmouth Sinfonia was a musical group founded by English composer Gavin Bryars, while teaching at Portsmouth School of Art in the early 1970s. ... Classical music is a broad, somewhat imprecise term, referring to music produced in, or rooted in the traditions of, European art, ecclesiastical and concert music, encompassing a broad period from roughly 1000 to the present day. ... Brian Peter George St. ... Virgin release Discreet Music (1975) is an album by the British ambient musician Brian Eno. ...

Bryars's later works have included A Man In A Room, Gambling (1997), which was written on commission from BBC Radio 3 and Artangel. Bryars's music is heard beneath monologues spoken by the Spanish artist Juan Muñoz, who talks about methods of cheating at card games. The ten short works were played on Radio 3 without any introductory announcements, and Bryars is quoted as saying that he hoped they would appear to the listener in a similar way to the shipping forecast, both mysterious and accepted without question. BBC Radio 3 is a domestic UK BBC radio station, which devotes most of its schedule to classical music. ... Look up artist in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Juan Muñoz (born Madrid, Spain 1953) was a Spanish artist who died unexpectedly in August 2001. ... The Shipping Forecast is a regular feature of BBC Radio 4 (part of the BBC) and is provided by the UK Meteorological Office (part of MoD) on behalf of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (part of DfT). ...

Bryars has written a large number of other works, including three operas, and a number of instrumental pieces, among them three string quartets and several concertos. He has written several pieces for choreographers, including Biped (2001) for Merce Cunningham. Between 1981-1984 he participated in the CIVIL warS, a vast, never-completed multimedia project by Robert Wilson. The Teatro alla Scala in Milan. ... The resident string quartet of the Library of Congress in 1963 A string quartet is a musical ensemble of four string instruments—usually two violins, a viola and cello—or a piece written to be performed by such a group. ... The term concerto (plural is concerti or concertos) usually refers to a musical work in which one solo instrument is contrasted with an orchestra. ... Choreography (also known as dance composition) is the art of making structures in which movement occurs, the term composition may also refer to the navigation or connection of these movement structures. ... Merce Cunningham (born April 16, 1919 in Centralia, Washington, United States) is an American dancer and choreographer. ... the CIVIL warS: a tree is best measured when it is down is an opera created in the early 1980s by director Robert Wilson to music by Philip Glass and others. ... Robert Wilson (born 4 October 1941) is an internationally acclaimed American avant-garde stage director and playwright who has been called [America]s — or even the worlds — foremost vanguard theater artist [1]. Over the course of his wide-ranging career, he has also worked as a choreographer, performer, painter...

Bryars founded the music department at Leicester Polytechnic (now De Montfort University), and taught there for a number of years. He lives in England, and, in the summer months, on the west coast of Canada. DeMontfort University is also the name of a fictional university in The Class Menagerie and i. ...

External links

• Gavin Bryars.com - The official Gavin Bryars website : bio, discog, news, etc.
• Gavin Bryars discography