THE SINKING OF THE TITANIC

Champ d'Action with a programme based on Michael Nyman and Gavin Bryars

Before they became high-profile composers, Gavin Bryars and Michael Nyman were active in the British experimental scene which, in those days (we are talking about the late 1960's and ealry 1970's) was dominated by Cornelius Cardew and his followers.  With his highly imaginative conceptual pieces, Bryars was one of the controversial figureheads of the scene, while Nyman emerged primarily as the chronicler of this generation.  His book 'Experimental Music: Cage and beyond' remains today a valuable musicological study of the kind of experimental ideas that were in the air at the time.

The programme of this concert shows how these two British composers, coming from this experimental background, took their first steps towards the style that would bring them fame a few years later.  Surprisingly enough, establishing their own styles went hand-in-hand with the integration of 'historical' references: the hyper-tonal waltzes of Nyman, the assimilation of the harmonic progressions of Percy Grainger in Bryars' 'Hi-Tremolo', the dissection of a piece by the Bill Evans Trio in 'My First Homage' and the equally unorthodox treatment of Mozart in Nyman's 'In Re Don Giovanni'.

The high point of the concert will be Bryars' pièce de résistance 'The Sinking of The Titanic': initially written as a conceptual work, it soon assumed the status of the protoype of Bryars' elegiac meditations.  The hymns, Morse code signals and underwater atmosphere will be imbued with the characteristically uncompromising Champ d'Action 'sound'.

Maarten Beirens

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