British composer Gavin Bryars Good news! It’s time for another fun-filled instalment of “New Music I Like”.
Gavin Bryars is a big star in the contemporary music world, so he hardly needs a bump from me. Yet I’m here today to talk up a percussion piece he wrote back in 1994: One Last Bar and Then Joe Can Sing.
Works for percussion ensemble can be tiresome things: leaden, clunky and static, with lots of noisy thrashing around, and a “when-in-doubt-hit-another-cymbal” approach to compositional structure. But One Last Bar isn’t like that. It’s subtle, nuanced and fluid, with a strong sense of harmonic direction. Beautiful!
I discovered the piece through an excellent YouTube video, in a performance by four Hungarian percussionists: Lajhó Gyula, Hlaszny Ádám, Janca Dániel, Tóth Péter and Halmschlager György. But apparently, the piece was originally commissioned and premiered by Toronto’s recently retired Nexus Ensemble.
Here’s the video:
© Colin Eatock 2024
Gavin Bryars is a big star in the contemporary music world, so he hardly needs a bump from me. Yet I’m here today to talk up a percussion piece he wrote back in 1994: One Last Bar and Then Joe Can Sing.
Works for percussion ensemble can be tiresome things: leaden, clunky and static, with lots of noisy thrashing around, and a “when-in-doubt-hit-another-cymbal” approach to compositional structure. But One Last Bar isn’t like that. It’s subtle, nuanced and fluid, with a strong sense of harmonic direction. Beautiful!
I discovered the piece through an excellent YouTube video, in a performance by four Hungarian percussionists: Lajhó Gyula, Hlaszny Ádám, Janca Dániel, Tóth Péter and Halmschlager György. But apparently, the piece was originally commissioned and premiered by Toronto’s recently retired Nexus Ensemble.
Here’s the video:
© Colin Eatock 2024
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