|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
LP
|
|
NMN 171LP
|
In Là is the outcome of the collaboration between Gavin Bryars and the Italian visual artist Massimo Bartolini. Staged as a large-scale installation at the Luigi Pecci Centre for Contemporary Art in Prato, Italy, during the autumn of 2022, Bartolini transformed scaffolding into pipe organ bars, suspended from the ceiling across seven rooms of the museum as the central piece for his retrospective exhibition. It is the music played by these singular organs, composed by Bryars, that makes up the two sides of Alga Marghen's LP edition. Here is a compositional practice by Gavin Bryars returning to some of the experimental and conceptual territory that defined his work during the early 1970s, prior to the composition of seminal works like "The Sinking of The Titanic" and "Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet". In Là presents the composer working across the vast space of the installation, with sounds physically spread in each of the museum's rooms and placed in careful consideration of the space continuity, while at the same time never fulling being experienced in its totality by the listener. This allows the LP documentation of the work to become a singular complement to the live, real-time aural adventure, unveiling phenomena and perceptions of the work's rich tones and poetic structures that would otherwise be unavailable. While Gavin Bryars background in music is well documented, the connections of Massimo Bartolini's poetic to sound as less known. The early practice of modifying architectural or domestic devices into sound producers, eventually led Massimo Bartolini to create installations made of scaffolding tubes which are modified into the pipes of an organ. Conceived in different forms and in relation to different architectural contexts since 2008, these works clearly relate to Baroque organs, the most visual of musical instruments, and to the use of scaffolding in construction sites. The organ conceived for the solo survey at Centro per l'arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci in Prato is the largest incarnation of these series and altogether the largest installation ever conceived by the artist. Hung from a structure that runs along the museum ceiling and suspended just centimeters above the floor, Bartolini built a continuous 75-meters-long wall of scaffolding tubes which winds through seven of the ten rooms of the exhibition space. For this structure of complex engineering Gavin Bryars was invited to compose a specific polyphonic score. Assigning each room a unique melody, the composition creates a richly layered soundscape that is constantly shifting with the viewer as they move through the space. As the title suggests -- alluding to the dominant tonality (La) of the piece -- the score is always "beyond," out of reach, never experienced in its entirety by a single listener as, in fact, the shape of the organ itself. Standard edition of 400; including an insert with liner notes and photo documentation of the installation; numbered.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
PLANA BB52
|
LP version. Limited edition of 90; signed and numbered copies in a sleeve specially conceived by Massimo Bartolini, including a score from Gavin Bryars and an original engraving by Massimo Bartolini. In Là is the outcome of the collaboration between Gavin Bryars and the Italian visual artist Massimo Bartolini. Staged as a large-scale installation at the Luigi Pecci Centre for Contemporary Art in Prato, Italy, during the autumn of 2022, Bartolini transformed scaffolding into pipe organ bars, suspended from the ceiling across seven rooms of the museum as the central piece for his retrospective exhibition. It is the music played by these singular organs, composed by Bryars, that makes up the two sides of Alga Marghen's LP edition. Here is a compositional practice by Gavin Bryars returning to some of the experimental and conceptual territory that defined his work during the early 1970s, prior to the composition of seminal works like "The Sinking of The Titanic" and "Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet". In Là presents the composer working across the vast space of the installation, with sounds physically spread in each of the museum's rooms and placed in careful consideration of the space continuity, while at the same time never fulling being experienced in its totality by the listener. This allows the LP documentation of the work to become a singular complement to the live, real-time aural adventure, unveiling phenomena and perceptions of the work's rich tones and poetic structures that would otherwise be unavailable. While Gavin Bryars background in music is well documented, the connections of Massimo Bartolini's poetic to sound as less known. The early practice of modifying architectural or domestic devices into sound producers, eventually led Massimo Bartolini to create installations made of scaffolding tubes which are modified into the pipes of an organ. Conceived in different forms and in relation to different architectural contexts since 2008, these works clearly relate to Baroque organs, the most visual of musical instruments, and to the use of scaffolding in construction sites. The organ conceived for the solo survey at Centro per l'arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci in Prato is the largest incarnation of these series and altogether the largest installation ever conceived by the artist. Hung from a structure that runs along the museum ceiling and suspended just centimeters above the floor, Bartolini built a continuous 75-meters-long wall of scaffolding tubes which winds through seven of the ten rooms of the exhibition space. For this structure of complex engineering Gavin Bryars was invited to compose a specific polyphonic score. Assigning each room a unique melody, the composition creates a richly layered soundscape that is constantly shifting with the viewer as they move through the space. As the title suggests -- alluding to the dominant tonality (La) of the piece -- the score is always "beyond," out of reach, never experienced in its entirety by a single listener as, in fact, the shape of the organ itself.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
CD
|
|
SV 161CD
|
"Gavin Bryars was born in Yorkshire, England in 1943. His first musical forays were as a jazz bassist working in the early 1960s with improvisors Derek Bailey and Tony Oxley. Bryars later worked with composers John Cage and Cornelius Cardew, founded the Portsmouth Sinfonia and collaborated with Brian Eno on his famed Obscure imprint. The Sinking of the Titanic, Bryars' first major composition, was inspired by the tragic event of the British passenger liner's cross-Atlantic maiden voyage. Bryars eloquently reconstructs the passengers' experience -- at once forlorn and eerily calming -- through assemblages of understated strings and indeterminate elements. A core principle of the piece is that the ship's band continued to play as the vessel went down. One of the most sublime works in the modern classical canon, Titanic remains Bryars' magnum opus. Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet, the album's second sidelong track, is based on a tape loop of a London street singer captured in the early 1970s. Featuring Derek Bailey, Michael Nyman and John White, Bryars' composition gradually builds around the cripplingly poignant voice until its emotional force is almost too much to bear. It's no surprise that Jesus' Blood is known as Tom Waits' all-time favorite piece of music. Produced by Brian Eno in 1975 as the inaugural release on Obscure, The Sinking of the Titanic draws the listener in to a majestic world. While these exquisite, hymn-like recordings have not changed in nearly 50 years, their deeply personal nature and the audience's attention to their subtlety have only strengthened over time."
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
SV 161LP
|
LP version. "Gavin Bryars was born in Yorkshire, England in 1943. His first musical forays were as a jazz bassist working in the early 1960s with improvisors Derek Bailey and Tony Oxley. Bryars later worked with composers John Cage and Cornelius Cardew, founded the Portsmouth Sinfonia and collaborated with Brian Eno on his famed Obscure imprint. The Sinking of the Titanic, Bryars' first major composition, was inspired by the tragic event of the British passenger liner's cross-Atlantic maiden voyage. Bryars eloquently reconstructs the passengers' experience -- at once forlorn and eerily calming -- through assemblages of understated strings and indeterminate elements. A core principle of the piece is that the ship's band continued to play as the vessel went down. One of the most sublime works in the modern classical canon, Titanic remains Bryars' magnum opus. Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet, the album's second sidelong track, is based on a tape loop of a London street singer captured in the early 1970s. Featuring Derek Bailey, Michael Nyman and John White, Bryars' composition gradually builds around the cripplingly poignant voice until its emotional force is almost too much to bear. It's no surprise that Jesus' Blood is known as Tom Waits' all-time favorite piece of music. Produced by Brian Eno in 1975 as the inaugural release on Obscure, The Sinking of the Titanic draws the listener in to a majestic world. While these exquisite, hymn-like recordings have not changed in nearly 50 years, their deeply personal nature and the audience's attention to their subtlety have only strengthened over time."
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
CD
|
|
TONE 034CD
|
Performed by Gavin Bryars (double bass), Philip Jeck (turntables) and Alter Ego (strings, brass, wind, percussion, keyboard, tape recorder and sound design). This version of UK composer Gavin Bryars' seminal piece, The Sinking of the Titanic, was recorded at the 49th International Festival of Contemporary Music at The Venice Biennale, October 1, 2005 at the Teatro Maliban. The Sinking of the Titanic is an open semi-aleatoric work written in 1969 and Bryars has developed versions of variable length (from 15 minutes to an hour) that have been performed in different contexts, both as sound installation and as a real concert work. The piece has its origins in an obsession (one in which Bryars meditates on the famous ship's sinking), whose evidence is in a minute handwritten notebook. This brings together information, curiosities, evidence, statistical data on the survivors, technical research on the ship, on the places occupied by the passengers, on projects for the wreck's recovery. This sinking is then a metaphor for the failure of modern technology, of the paradox of modernity, the fact that a super-technological ship could have been rammed and sunk by a block of ice. The version proposed by Alter Ego (a contemporary music group based in Rome, Italy) and Gavin Bryars is an absolutely new approach for the project and for multimedia installation. The other important new figure in this version is Philip Jeck, one of the most important names on the experimental scene. Jeck uses his experience to cover the sound with a blanket of thin dust, which, at the same time, is memory, distance, hallucination, traveling and anxiety. The dust which comes from the obsessive repetition of a short phrase and its melancholy is part of a harmony that Jeck shares with Bryars that succeeds in freezing time in another dimension. This is another important aspect of the Titanic idea: one related to memory and to lifetime, to concreteness and abstraction meant as a metaphor for the journey between life and death, the ocean's surface and depth. Gavin Bryars (double bass); Philip Jeck (turntables); Alter Ego (strings, brass, wind, percussion, keyboard, tape recorder and sound design). Limited edition of 2000 CD in a special wallet + postcard [postcard image by media artist Andrew Hooker]. Artwork by Jon Wozencroft.
|
|
|
|