Gavin Bryars 80th Birthday Concert

Gavin Bryars’s 80th Birthday Concert at Attenborough Centre for Creative Arts. University of Sussex.

I particularly admired the pulsating chordal string textures as the ensemble began to take flight from the regular pulsations and slowly changing harmonies that dominate this composer’s intensely coherent outputs. It was fascinating to hear a version of Jesus’s Blood Never Failed Me Yet. The composer introduced this, reflecting that he had been performing with the loop of the unknown tramp’s song for 52 years, and still found it captivating and moving. The composition does indeed inspire and impress - the ensemble joins and intensifies the song with kaleidoscopic colours glancing through a hypnotic refrain - still there for a few seconds when the looped song finally fades to nothing. Another composition, The North Shore, had an almost expressionistic depth, and an almost developmental intensity, which I very much liked. There was an impressive meld between Audrey Riley’s fine and sensitive cello playing and James Woodrow’s electric guitar, whose pure vibraphone-like notes sounded almost ethereal at times. It was good to chat to members of the band Squid, who had returned to their former university to catch this unusual concert on a brief break between their European and UK tour.