Rich sounds of minimalism

By WILLIAM DART

Julian Lloyd Webber and Tom Waits might seem like strange bedfellows on a single CD, but the two men are almost shoulder to shoulder on a new tribute collection to British composer Gavin Bryars.

Bryars turned 60 a few weeks ago, and this generous collection (two discs for the price of one) covers most of his musical bases, with a number of major scores and tantalising extracts from his two best-known works, The Sinking of the Titanic and Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet.

Titanic, when it first appeared on LP in 1975, offered an eerie portrait of the slow, inevitable entombment of the great liner. Almost 20 years on, the 1994 CD was radically different from its first airing. And, last year, Bryars fashioned a short Titanic Lament from the 1994 recording for this new collection.

With Jesus, the composer set a loop of a homeless tramp singing a fragment of a religious song against an instrumental overlay, until Tom Waits eventually enters (at 53'14" on the 1993 album).

On Portrait we have two short extracts, a remarkably catchy "single" and a rather spectral "remix" in which Waits' voice is taken over by the tramps. These are curiosities, collectibles perhaps, but the real power of this work lies in its mantra-like repetitions.

Bryars is a deeply spiritual composer - most movingly in his 1998 Cadman requiem written for a sound engineer friend killed in the Lockerbie tragedy. The spiritual blends with the philosophical in his Cello Concerto, Farewell to Philosophy, which opens this new collection. Julian Lloyd Webber gives a poignant, searching account of one of the few pieces of contemporary music that he seems to have any time for, while its dark, brooding beauties are moulded by the baton of our own James Judd.

The other most recent work is the 1998 Adnan Songbook, rapturous settings of love poems by the Lebanese writer Etel Adrian. Soprano Valerie Anderson is riveting, while behind her, bass clarinet and electric guitar blend mellifluously with violas and cello.

The minimalists have had some bad press lately in this country, but Bryars' particular brand of post-minimalism shows the huge expressive potential of this style. Hopefully this collection will tempt some into exploring further afield. Personally, my patience is being sorely tested at the moment, waiting for Bryars' next CD, which will feature a new Violin Concerto alongside songs for the jazz singer Holly Cole.

* Gavin Bryars: A Portrait (Philips 473 296-2)