Gavin Bryars at 80

‘The music of Gavin Bryars falls under no category. It is mongrel, full of sensuality and wit and is deeply moving. He is one of the few composers who can put slapstick and primal emotion alongside each other. He allows you to witness new wonders in the sounds around you by approaching them from a completely new angle’ Michael Ondaatje

Gavin Bryars started his musical career as a jazz bassist, working in the early 1960s with improvisers Derek Bailey and Tony Oxley, with whom he formed the Joseph Holbrooke Trio. In 1966 he switched direction, abandoning improvisation and heading to the United States to work with the experimental composer John Cage.

Bryars’s first major composition, The Sinking of the Titanic, appeared on Brian Eno’s Obscure Records in 1975 and, alongside his seminal 1971 work Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet, which featured the looped vocals of a homeless man singing an unknown hymn, established his reputation worldwide as a prominent figure in minimalist and experimental music. Both pieces have evolved and expanded over time, being performed with artists from across the musical spectrum, ranging from Aphex Twin and experimental turntablist Philip Jeck, to the London Philharmonic and Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. The ground-breaking 1993 recording of Jesus’ Blood, which featured singer Tom Waits, was also nominated for a Mercury Music Prize.

Bryars has an extensive worklist, including many operas: Dr Ox’s Experiment for English National Opera, Medea for Opéra de Lyon, The Collected Works of Billy The Kid with Michael Ondaatje and the chamber opera Marilyn Forever with librettist Marilyn Bowering; numerous vocal works, concertos and ballets, the last of these including Biped, which formed part of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s legacy tour and was revived in 2018 and in 2019 and will be again next year. His collaboration with Philadelphia-based choir The Crossing has included the recent Grammy Award-winning The Fifth Century, which in turn led to his latest large-scale vocal work, A Native Hill, for which both the choir and Bryars received glowing reviews.

Bryars regularly works with visual and literary artists, collaborations borne of his time teaching in fine arts colleges in the 1970s. During his time at Portsmouth College of Art he was instrumental in founding the anarchic Portsmouth Sinfonia, an orchestra comprised of players using instruments with which they were completely unfamiliar.

He has worked with visual artists such as Juan Muñoz (A Man In A Room, Gambling), Massimo Bartolini, Robert Wilson (Civil Wars, Medea), The Quay Brothers and many writers, among them Blake Morrison, Etel Adnan, Marilyn Bowering, Michael Ondaatje and the singer-songwriter Father John Misty on his album Pure Comedy. 

After studying at Leeds University, City University, London, and the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, David Wordsworth worked for several years as a teacher and in music publishing. He was Music Director of The Addison Singers between 1995 and 2022. His choirs had a regular London season and toured to many parts of Europe and appeared at New York’s Carnegie Hall, as well as at many UK festivals. He has conducted and adjudicated in Hungary, Poland, Ireland, USA, Italy, Spain, France, Austria, Norway, Mexico, Cuba and the Philippines, and has held residencies at several universities in the USA.

In 2016 he conducted the Marian Consort and the Berkeley Ensemble in a revival of Lennox Berkeley’s Stabat mater, presenting it at the Aldeburgh Easter, Spitalfields and Cheltenham festivals, subsequently broadcasting the work for the BBC and recording it for Delphian Records. In 2018 he curated a year-long festival of American music at St John’s Smith Square, at which he appeared as both conductor and pianist. His book Giving voice to my music – interviews with choral composers – was published by Kahn & Averill in 2021.

Recent highlights have included a concert of English music at St Stephen’s Cathedral, Vienna, the premiere of a work by Judith Weir, as part of his last concert with The Addison Singers, a tour of Walton’s Façade with the Berkeley Ensemble (to celebrate the work’s 100th anniversary), and performances in France and Poland. His new book, The Music of Gavin Bryars, was published by Kahn & Averill last month.  Plans for 2024 include concerts in California, Vienna and Warsaw, as well as performances of Gavin Bryars’s opera Marilyn Forever.

Sarah Gabriel made her USA debut as Lucy Lockit (Britten’s The Beggar’s Opera) conducted by Lorin Maazel, and her European debut as Eliza Doolittle in Robert Carsen’s acclaimed production of My Fair Lady at the Théâtre du Châtelet.

Having performed opera, recitals and concerts of music spanning 500 years, she is increasingly recognised for creating work with artists of all disciplines, such as world premieres with Rambert Dance Company, the Air Loom album and national tour with the composer and multi-instrumentalist Sarah Angliss, live vocal improvisation to The Passion of Joan of Arc with pianist Joanna MacGregor and jazz ensemble, and the soundtrack for Romola Garai’s directorial debut, Amulet. Performances with conductor David Wordsworth include this year’s 100th-anniversary performances of Walton’s Façade with the Berkeley Ensemble. Her solo shows include Lucrezia’s Last Breath (inspired by Handel’s La Lucrezia) and Dorothy Parker Takes a Trip (Oxford Playhouse; UK tour; National Theatre Romania).

As an actor, films include Brigitte Rouan’s Tu honoreras ta mère et ta mère and the lockdown short, Our Love is Here to Stay, directed by Michael Hoffman. Commissions as a writer include Beethoveniana for BBC Proms and plays for Aldeburgh and Dartington festivals. Her first screenplay is in development with Altitude Films. Performance projects for 2024 include Poulenc’s La voix humaine, Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire and a new show for The Blue Hour, her Weimar Berlin cabaret founded with composer Tim Sutton.

David James was a choral scholar at Magdalen College, Oxford and subsequently joined the choir of Westminster Abbey.

As a founder-member of The Hilliard Ensemble, he performed some 100 concerts a year with this internationally renowned vocal chamber group, performing both medieval and Renaissance repertoire and new works by composers such as Sir James MacMillan, Heinz Holliger, Heiner Goebbels and Wolfgang Rihm. Officium, the ensemble’s collaboration with the jazz saxophonist Jan Garbarek on ECM, topped both classical and jazz charts in many countries around the world.  The Hilliard Ensemble gained a special reputation for performances of the music of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, several of whose works they have recorded (also on ECM).

As a soloist David James has been invited to premiere important new works for countertenor and, in particular, has developed a special relationship with Heinz Holliger and Gavin Bryars. 

Whether in the realm of re-establishing the harpsichord’s presence as a significant concerto instrument with leading orchestras of the day, working with electronics and new media, or playing some of the first harpsichord recitals in such places as China, Mahan Esfahani has established himself as a new pioneer of his instrument.

Following studies in musicology and history at Stanford University he completed his studies with Zuzana Růžičková in Prague. He was the first and only harpsichordist to be a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist (2008–10), a Borletti–Buitoni prize-winner (2009), and a nominee for Gramophone’s Artist of the Year (2014, 2015 and 2017). 

His richly varied discography includes 10 critically acclaimed recordings for Hyperion and DG – garnering one Gramophone Award, two BBC Music Magazine Awards, a Diapason d’Or and ‘Choc de Classica’ in France and two ICMAs. For BBC Radio 3 he recently recorded a three-part series entitled The Alternative Bach, exploring rare recordings and interpretations of JS Bach’s music. This accompanies his ongoing cycle at Wigmore Hall, in which he performs the entire collection of JS Bach’s works for keyboard. In 2022 he became the youngest recipient of the Wigmore Medal, in recognition of his significant contribution and longstanding relationship with the hall. Gavin Bryars wrote a harpsichord concerto for him in 2023 and is currently writing a work for harpsichord and string quartet.

Born in Tehran in 1984 and raised in the United States, Mahan Esfahani lived in Milan and then London for several years before taking up residence in Prague.

The Addison Chamber Choir is an auditioned choir consisting of around 30 voices who sing a large range of repertoire but have become particularly known for the performance of music by a wide range of contemporary composers, many of whom have written pieces especially for the choir.

The choir regularly performs at venues across London. Most recently, it performed as part of the Brandenburg Choral Festival at St Margaret Pattens in a programme featuring Howell’s Requiem, Vaughan Williams’s Serenade to Music and works by Paul Mealor and Morten Lauridsen. In May next year the choir will embark on a tour to Seville.

The Addison Chamber Choir also frequently participates in concerts given by the Addison Oratorio Choir.

Matthew Thomas Morgan took up the position of Music Director in January this year.