Gavin Bryars at 80

In Bryars’s experimental opera, Doctor Ox introduces a gas into a sleepy Flemish village. Everyone and everything becomes sped up, and chaos ensues. Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet is built around a hypnotic loop of a homeless man singing lines from a hymn. ‘After minutes of this eerie solo vocal, Bryars – with incredible focus and delicacy – introduces a swelling orchestral pattern to accompany the fragile voice’ (Guardian). Over 50 years it has gone through an evolution, with no two performances sounding exactly alike.

We also hear a selection of shorter works, from pieces that bridge early music with 20th-century experimentation to the Epilogue from Bryars’s suite Wonderlawn, an instrumental lullaby-without-words that brings the evening to a close. David Wordsworth, who has known Bryars for more than 25 years, conducts the performance.