MAYFEST'S general manager Billy Kelly will kill me over this one, but
I'm not convinced that the Beck's Tent was the appropriate venue for the
Gavin Bryars Ensemble. Somewhere that would have brought us closer to
the intimate (though amplified) music of Bryars would have been better;
and somewhere less cavernous to accommodate the several hundred tuned-in
and turned-on souls that attended.
Anyway, to the show. Bryars, despite the cultish aura that has grown
around him, despite the experimental tag sometimes attached, is an out
and out romantic composer. Though the Bryars octet sounded a bit raw in
the tent (not their fault -- they contended with everything from a
lyrical avian intruder to booming air-conditioning) what proceeded from
the five numbers they played was an evening of mostly slow, warm,
attractive music, leisurely sculpted over arches of time, and performed
with great beauty.
The dreamy, languid sounds of Allegrasco were followed by the
fascinating Man Gambling in a Room -- a quartet selected from a larger
piece which is accompanimental music to a series of lectures on how to
cheat at cards. The Old Tower, beginning darkly, rose to a glorious
climax that featured the brilliant, impassioned viola playing of Bill
Hawkes (a familiar face in Scotland).
Sub Rosa (based on a Bill Frisell improvisation) was stately and
luminous; but the best (of course) came last in a hypnotic and touching
half-hour version of Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet, in which a taped
Tom Waits made a surprise guest appearance in the coda. Lovely night.
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