Gavin Bryars, John Berger & John Christie
Release Date: 05 April 2010
Label: GB Records
Packaging Type: Jewel Case
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 5060154170832
Genres: Classical
Description
This highly original album of music by Gavin Bryars brings together two works with their roots in the visual arts, "I Send You This Cadmium Red" and "The Island Chapel". The former is a collaboration with artist John Christie and writer John Berger, originally made as a radio programme, while the latter was written for the Tate Gallery, St Ives.
When the artist John Christie and Booker award-winning writer John Berger ('Ways of Seeing') decided to collaborate on a project, they didn't know what it might be. From urban London, Christie sent Berger, in southern France, a square of colour, with a letter that ended with the sentence "I send you this cadmium red.." Berger replied, musing on this and other colours, thereby setting in motion an extensive correspondence that moved into meditations on the essence of individual colours, but ranging widely through poetry, art history, memory. This correspondence was eventually published as an elegant book and the CD retains the book's episodic and varied non-narrative approach. In this recording, originally made as a radio broadcast by Sony Award winning producer Paul Bennun, a selection of these letters is read by their authors, accompanied by original music by Gavin Bryars, who began to work with John Berger through their mutual friendship with the late Juan Muñoz. Performed by members of the Gavin Bryars Ensemble, the richly dark-toned music is designed to underline the colour themes in the texts - their texture, their atmosphere and their resonance.
In addition to the radiophonic work, there is "The Island Chapel", written for a project with the Tate Gallery St Ives, and which is alluded to in the Christie/ Berger exchanges. This recording is of the first performance, in the tiny St Nicholas Chapel perched above the Tate and overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.
Personnel "I Send You This Cadmium Red": John Berger and John Christie (speaking voices), James Woodrow (electric guitar), Roger Heaton (bass clarinet), Bill Hawkes (viola), Gavin Bryars (double bass)
Personnel "The Island Chapel": Melanie Pappenheim (voice), Sophie Harris (cello), Gavin Bryars (electric keyboard)
Tracklisting
Gavin Bryars
Gavin Bryars
Gavin Bryars
Gavin Bryars
Gavin Bryars, John Berger & John Christie
Gavin Bryars & Juan Munoz
Gavin Bryars Ensemble
Latvian Radio Choir
Karolos
Daniel Di Prinzio, Ihor Kordiuk
Nora von Marschall
Isabel Schicketanz
The Counterpoints
Narratio Quartet
Danbi Um; Juho Pohjonen
Lea Suter
