The Sinking of the Titanic by Gavin Bryars Performed live by the Aventa Ensemble on December 4, 2012 At the Vancouver Aquatic Centre Presented by Redshift Music www.redshiftmusic.org Most of the audience at the cavernous Vancouver Aquatic Centre are on the bleachers but a selection of adventurous souls choose to watch the concert while floating in the pool! "The Sinking of the Titanic" is available through the courtesy of Schott Music Corporation/European American Music CREDITS: Aventa Ensemble www.aventa.ca Bill Linwood - director and percussion Darnell Linwood - horn Muge Buyukcelen - viola Mieka Michaux - viola Alasdair Money - cello Darren Buhr - double bass Corey Rae - percussion with guests Adrian Verdejo - electric guitar AK Coope - clarinets Colin MacDonald - saxophones Lighting Design: Conor Moore Sound: Will Howie Production Manager: Nicholas Jacques Audio Recording: Paul Luchkow Cameras: Chris Porter, Chris Randle Editing: Chris Randle A Chris Randle Video PROGRAMME NOTE: The Sinking of the Titanic originated in a sketch written for an exhibition in support of beleaguered art students at Portsmouth in 1969. Working as I was in an art college environment, I was interested to see what might be the musical equivalent of a work of conceptual art. It was not until 1972 that I made a performing version of the piece for a performance at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London. The materials used in this work are derived from research and speculations about the sinking of the “unsinkable” luxury liner. At 11:40PM, on April 14, 1912, RMS Titanic struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic and sank at 2:20 AM on April 15. Of the 2201 people on board, only 711 survived. The starting point for this piece was the reported fact of the band having played a hymn tune in the final moments of the ship’s sinking. A number of other features of the disaster, which generate musical or sounding performance material, or which ‘take the mind to other regions’, are also included. The final hymn played during those last 5 minutes of the ship’s life is identified in an account by Harold Bride, the junior wireless operator, in an interview for the New York Times on April 19, 1912. This Episcopal hymn, then, becomes a basic element of the music and is subject to a variety of treatments. Bride did not hear the band stop playing and it would appear that the musicians continued to play even as the water enveloped them. My initial speculations centered, therefore, on what happens to music as it is played in water. On a purely physical level, of course, it simply stops since the strings would fail to produce much of a sound (it was a string sextet that played at the end, since the two pianists with the band had no instruments available on the Boat Deck). On a poetic level, however, the music, once generated in water, would continue to reverberate for long periods of time in the more sound-efficient medium of water. The music would then descend with the ship to the ocean bed and remain there, repeating over and over until the ship returns to the surface and the sounds re-emerge. (GB) Gavin Bryars (1960) Born in Yorkshire in 1943, Gavin Bryars began his career as a jazz bassist and pioneer of free improvisation with Derek Bailey and Tony Oxley. He subsequently worked in the USA with John Cage and in Britain alongside Cornelius Cardew. His early iconic works The Sinking of the Titanic (1969) and Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet (1971) enjoyed major recording success in various versions. He has written extensively for the stage, including three full-length operas and dance works for, amongst others, Merce Cunningham, Edouard Lock and William Forsythe. Bryars has a long list of instrumental, orchestral and vocal works to his credit for artists such as the Hilliard Ensemble, Red Byrd, Trio Mediaeval, the Latvian Radio Choir and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Bryars currently divides his residences between Leicestershire, UK and Metchosin, British Columbia. Gavin Bryars continues to perform internationally with his own ensemble. www.gavinbryars.com

• published: 08 Jan 2013
• views: 2435

When the time came to follow-up on her breakthrough 2007 album Nothing Fancy, Canadian country bombshell Jessie Farrell’s pursuit of authenticity was so painstaking that she actually put her health at risk. “When I'm giving something every bit of energy I have, I find myself getting short of breath,” she reveals, with a giggle (and a slight wheeze that’s a little hard to ignore). “I’ve done it since I was 12 years old. It’s anxiety. At the end of this record, I feel like I learned how to breathe better, and I learned how to sing better, and then on the last day of recording, I went and got ‘Breathe’ tattooed on my wrist.” We can probably assume from her comments that Farrell is satisfied with the results. The flame-haired Vancouverite had wrapped-up her debut on the Canadian Country scene with three 2008 CCMAs when she lit out to Nashville on a writing expedition in mid-2008, winning for Female Artist of the Year, Rising Star, and Top New Female Talent of the Year, not to mention scoring a 2009 Juno nomination for New Artist of the Year. The 2007 album Nothing Fancy had elevated Farrell into Canada’s country A-list, yielding a top 10 single with “Let’s Talk About Love”, a top 5 video for “I Guess”, and putting the rising artist on the road with Emerson Drive, Johnny Reid, Aaron Pritchett, Alan Jackson, Brooks & Dunn, Gord Bamford, and Toby Keith, among others. With so much buzz at her heels, and facing her sophomore effort, Farrell readily admits she needed to come up with a slam-dunk “That was in my head the whole time,” she says, describing the meticulous lengths she took to find a producer who, in Farrell’s words, “would be willing to basically lay down on the railroad tracks with me.” “I’m not one of those people that can get by knowing it’s just another record for them,” she elaborates. “I want them to be my friend, and I want it to expand far beyond just being my producer.” A raft of industry giants were, at this point, clamoring to hitch up with the hyperventilating songbird. After interviewing a good number of them, Farrell was still producer-less, but wiser. “What I really learned in this process is that it’s all about human connection,” she asserts. “How are you going to make sure they hear you, and that they’re putting their heart and souls into it? You can say, ‘Here’s a certain amount of money, please make me a record.’ But I knew that that would not be a successful record, and that I would not thrive inside that environment.” Enter Victoria Shaw – one of Music City’s insurgent major-players; a singing-songwriting-producing tyro with auspicious credits like Garth Brooks’ “The River” under her belt, and no small amount of heat from a recent co-production job on Lady Antebellum's smash debut. Shaw met Farrell at an industry party and abruptly turned the tables on her. “She said to me, ‘Why don’t we date before we sleep together’,” Farrell recalls with a laugh. “She said, ‘I gotta see what you’re like writing, I gotta see what you’re like in the studio, to work with, to collaborate with - then I’ll see if I wanna do this record with you.’” Shaw subsequently roped songwriter Gary Burr into the scene, adding another hit-making heavyweight to an already formidable duo, and the team swiftly drummed up three of the tracks that would end up on Good, Bad & Pretty Things. At the end of it all, Farrell was calmly informed that she’d aced her “week long interview”. And the real work began. Significantly, among those initial three songs was Farrell’s first single from Good, Bad & Pretty Things, “You Make Me Feel” – a country-pop confection every bit as bright, crafty, and insidious as “Let’s Talk About Love”, built not only on a gigantic hook, but on the striking emotional logic of the line, “You make me feel like that each time you kiss me, my heart starts racing like a car just missed me…” “I think it’s fun, summery, an earworm,” Farrell says, with touching modesty. “It’s not a complicated song, but I think it’s a good one to ease people in with. And it’s a love song.” Farrell hopes the effect is like “little soap bubbles, with hearts in them, that will pop in people’s laps.” At the other end of the scale, her first week with Shaw and Burr also produced “Burn So Bright”, which began as a tribute to Farrell’s brother (who passed away in 2001), before morphing into a broader hymn to affirmation. ”I’m hoping it’ll be an anthemic songs for people moving on to the next stage of their life, or about to attempt something new,” she offers. Shaw’s crisp and restrained production keeps “Burn So Bright” on the correct side of sentimental, while leaving plenty of room for Farrell’s keening vocal (not to mention a sizzling fiddle-pedal steel showdown). Indeed, across the whole of Good, Bad & Pretty Things, Farrell and Shaw rai

• published: 04 Jan 2010
• views: 10549