Music Matters

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Music Matters: Gavin Bryars at 80

Gavin Bryars at 80

BBC Radio 3 - Music Matters, Gavin Bryars at 80

Tom Service talks to one of Britain's most influential composers, Gavin Bryars.

Tom Service talks to Gavin Bryars, one of Britain's most influential composers, and to some of Philip Glass's closest friends about a new edition of his complete Etudes for piano.

Tom Service talks to the British composer, Gavin Bryars, who turned 80 earlier this year. 

Known first as a jazz bassist in the 1960s, Bryars's early experimental work as a composer saw him collaborate with John Cage and Cornelius Cardew. His first major composition from 1969, ‘Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet’, remains his most enduring work along with 'The Sinking of the Titanic', both of which he continues to perform with the Gavin Bryars Ensemble. But Bryars' portfolio is wide-ranging, from solo piano to choral works, theatre, dance, and full-length operas. He's written for soloists including John Harle, Julian Lloyd Webber and Mahan Esfahani, and leading ensembles including the Hilliard Ensemble and US-based choir The Crossing. His use of subjects and texts stretches from Greek mythology, to Thomas Traherne, to living authors including a close partnership with Blake Morrison. 

Bryars talks to Tom about his influences, his musical language, why it's so important for him to work closely with other musicians, and why he always returns to the river in his East Yorkshire hometown of Goole.

Also today, as a new edition of Philip Glass's complete Etudes for piano is published, Tom talks to three of the composer's close friends and collaborators, all of whom have written essays for Studies in Time, a book which accompanies the new publication: artist and musician Laurie Anderson, pianist Maki Namekawa and composer Nico Muhly explain what this set of 20 piano studies means to them.

Music Matters visits the London Coliseum to hear from sopranos Nadine Benjamin and Sophie Bevan, as Marina Abramović's 7 Deaths of Maria Callas opens at English National Opera: a celebratory stage production which reimagines some of Callas' best known arias alongside new original music by Marko Nikodijević.

And following the UK government's AI Safety Summit this week, and the release of The Beatles' AI-assisted single Now and Then, the interim chief of UK Music Tom Kiehl explains the challenges and opportunities that Artificial Intelligence presents for the music sector.

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

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