Gavin Bryars at 80

Celebrate the composer's 80th birthday, with two of Gavin Bryars’s most iconic works, performed by the Gavin Bryars Ensemble.

In Bryars’s experimental opera, Doctor Ox introduces a gas into a sedate and conservative Flemish village with the result that everyone and everything becomes speeded up, and then chaos ensues. Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet is described by Bryars as ‘an eloquent, but understated testimony’ to the homeless man. Its hypnotic loop of a homeless man singing has evolved over the last 50 years, and Bryars says that he ‘reinvents the piece every time he performs it’ (Guardian). David Wordsworth, who has personally worked and studied with Bryars for more than 15 years, will conduct the performance.