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Gavin Bryars in Residence at Canberra International Music Festival

Apr. 30, 2013

Gavin Bryars in Residence at Canberra International Music Festival

Th­­e 19th annual Canberra International Music Festival features the music of Composer-in-Residence Gavin Bryars, May 10-19. Hosted by the Australian National University School of Music, the festival presents selections from Bryars’s Second Book of Madrigals as well as The Porazzi Fragment, conducted by the composer. The event culminates in a portrait concert, featuring several Laude, Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet, One Last Bar Then Joe Can Sing, and The Adnan Songbook.

One Last Bar Then Joe Can Sing, a commission by the Arts Council of Great Britain, was derived from the second act of Gavin Bryars’s opera, Medea. The “last bar” referenced in the title of the piece refers to the last measure of the opera, while “Joe” is an allusion to Bryars’s father who was a baritone. At Canberra, the Synergy Percussion Ensemble performs the work alongside percussionist J.B. Smith and pianists Timothy Young and Tamara Anna Cislowska.

Bryars speaks about One Last Bar Then Joe Can Sing:

In this piece, this one apparently innocuous measure is progressively fragmented until it is taken over, little by little, by the addition of tuned percussion instruments. Eventually two metallophones (crotales and songbells) play aria-like material with bows, occasionally joined by the xylophone, and accompanied by marimba and xylophone ostinati. The piece ends with a coda in which phrases are passed from bowed vibraphone to bowed crotales, then to bowed songbells, supported by tremolos on the marimbas.

The Canberra Festival's Bryars performances feature sopranos Susannah Lawergren and Anna Fraser and tenor Richard Black, as well as the Canberra Choral Society and faculty of the Australian National University (ANU) Music School.

The Bryars performances begin May 17 at ANU’s Albert Hall. For precise concert information, visit www.cimf.org.au.

To learn more about Gavin Bryars, go to www.schott-music.com.

Gavin Bryars
One Last Bar Then Joe Can Sing (1994)
for percussion ensemble
Percussion 1: Crotales (with bow), Chocolo, Mark Tree
Percussion 2: Song Bells (with bow), Chinese Cymbal, 3 Wood Blocks
Percussion 3: 2 Cymbals, 2 Triangles, Xylophone, Marimba (shared with Marimba II), Vibraphone (with bow)
Percussion 4: 2 Cymbals, 2 Gongs, Marimba I (with low F), Maracas
Percussion 5: 2 low Tom-Toms, Marimba II (to low A)
20’ 

Second Book of Madrigals (2001-2002)
for six voices
mixed choir (SSATTBar)
35’ 

The Porazzi Fragment (1999)
for 21 solo strings
11vn.4va.4vc.2db
15’

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