Composer Gavin Bryars, Isabella Hammad, Opera singers sing pop
Gavin Bryars on a new 12-hour performance of his 1971 classic piece Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet; can opera singers sing pop, and vice versa?; debut novelist Isabella Hammad
The contemporary classical composer Gavin Bryars talks about the latest incarnation of his acclaimed 1971 work, Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet – a 12-hour overnight rendition at Tate Modern in London. The piece is based on a fragment of tape of a homeless man singing, and this performance combines the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, Bryars’s own ensemble, the Southbank Sinfonia, and the participation of several homeless people.
Gavin Bryars also contributes his thoughts to the question: can opera singers sing pop and vice versa? What are the main differences between a trained bel canto voice and what some would call the more natural approach taken by folk, jazz or rock singers? Music critic Anna Picard and Christopher Purves, opera singer and former member of jazz vocal group Harvey and the Wallbangers, discuss.
Hailed by Zadie Smith as 'uncommonly poised and truly beautiful', the debut novelist Isabella Hammad discusses her 500-page epic The Parisian, set around the Palestinian struggle for independence in the early twentieth century.
Presenter Janina Ramirez
Producer Jerome Weatherald
Last on
Composer Gavin Bryars
Gavin Bryars: Jesus Love Never Failed Me Yet is being played by the Academy of St Martin in the Fields Chamber Orchestra, with members of the Southbank Sinfonia and some musicians who have experience of homelessness in a 12- hour performance from 20.00 - 08.00 on 12 April 2019 at Tate Modern, London.
Main image above: Gavin Bryars
Main Image credit: Doug Marke
Image to the left: Some of the homeless musicians in rehearsing Gavin Bryars' Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet
Isabella Hammad
The Parisian by Isabella Hammad is published on 11 April 2019.
Image: Isabella Hammad
Image credit: Urzula Soltys
Pop/opera crossovers
The recording of Henryk Gorecki Symphony No. 3 "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs" performed by Beth Gibbons and the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, cond. Krysztof Penderecki is out now.
You can see a screening of their performance in Bristol on 19 - 22 April, in Glasgow on 19 - 20 April, in Exter on 27 - 28 April, in Clevedon on 9 May, in Inverness on 13 May, Sheffield on 28 May, Dundee on 31 May, Cardiff on 14 - 16 June and Birmingham on 15 June.
Broadcast
- Wed 10 Apr 201919:15BBC Radio 4
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