At the end of April 2018, Gavin Bryars held a five-day workshop in Modern Composition at CAMP. Gavin arrived fresh from the debut of his opera Marilyn Forever at Volksoper in Vienna, and lead a highly successful session examining and developing the work of a small group of students from diverse backgrounds.

Through one-to-one tuition, classroom sessions exploring the various facets of Gavin's long musical history, discussions, group performances, recording sessions, film screenings and listening workshops, Gavin guided each participant to clarify their ideas and bring new work to finition. Dinner (and plenty of red wine) each night was followed by evening screenings of Gavin's operas and other works including his audiovisual documentation of the Goole-Hull stopping train.

Work produced by participants on the session included film scores and cinematic pieces, complex layered works blending field recordings with composed musical elements, French poetry (spoken by Gavin as well as local residents) set to music, noise/drone pieces constructed from audio provided by Gavin from his archive of recorded material, and processed field recordings.

Several releases of new work were formed from the session, including Lara Poe's exploration of the forest soundscape (https://kud.li/campfr101) and Crowhurst's forthcoming vinyl release of his collaborative work "Gavin Bryars Presents: Incoherent American Narrative".

Feedback from the session:

"Not only is Gavin Bryars one of my favourite composers, but he's now also one of my favourite human beings. Thanks for a life changing experience."

"This week has been such a nugget of gold. It's a privilege to spend a whole week talking about, thinking about, and writing music with really interesting creative people. Such an inspiring week."

Check out this little video made by one of the participants, Giorgio Schipani, including music Giorgio wrote during the session:



Alumni: Neil Burns | Claire Deak | Sunny Lazic | Jay Gambit (aka Crowhurst) | Kate Hall | Hayley Jenkins | Giorgio Schipani | Lara Poe |