Richard Gavin Bryars

Richard Gavin Bryars (born 1943 ) is an English composer and double bassist . He has been active in (or has produced works in) many varied styles of music, including jazz , free ...

Born in Yorkshire, England, Richard Gavin Bryars (b. January 16, 1943) is a composer and double bass player.
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Bryars has worked in a large number of forms, including opera, string quartets and concertos. He has also created dance music and participated in mutlitmedia projects as both a performer and a composer.

Richard Gavin Bryars (born 1943) is an English composer and double bass player that can be related to experimental music, avant-garde, neoclassicism, and ambient.

History

Born in Goole in Yorkshire, Bryars initially studied philosophy at Sheffield University before studying music for three years.

The first musical work for which is he remembered was his role as bassist in the trio Joseph Holbrooke, alongside Derek Bailey and Tony Oxley.The trio began by playing relatively traditional jazz before moving into free improvisation.However, Bryars became dissatified with this when he saw a young bassist play in a manner which seemed to him to be artificial, and he became interested in composition instead.
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Bryars was also involved around this time with the Portsmouth Sinfonia, an ensemble which was made up of performers of all musical abilities which played (or attempted to play) popular classical works.

Bryars' later works have included A Man In A Room, Gambling (1997), which was written on a commission from BBC Radio 3 and Artangel.Bryars' music is heard beneath monologues spoken by the Spanish artist Juan Muñoz, who talks about methods of cheating at card games.
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The ten short works were played on Radio 3 without any introductory announcements, and Bryars is quoted as saying that he hoped they would appear to the listener in a similar way to the shipping forecast, both mysterious and accepted without question.

Bryars has written a large number of other works, including three operas, and a number of instrumental pieces, among them three string quartets and several concertos.He has written several pieces for choreographers, including Biped (2001) for Merce Cunningham.

Bryars founded the music department at Leicester Polytechnic (now De Montfort University), and taught there for a number of years.He lives in England, and, in the summer months, on the west coast of Canada.