Prelude 3 - Sinfonietta Cracovia plays Gavin Bryars and Aleksandra Słyż

PRELUDE 3 · THURSDAY 14 MAY · KRAFTWERK BERLIN

Gavin Bryars, The Sinking of the Titanic (1969)
Gavin Bryars, Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet (1971)
Aleksandra Słyż, Pure Voices (2025)
performed by Sinfonietta Cracovia

Kraków's Sinfonietta Cracovia performs two works that sit at the foundation of English experimental composition. Gavin Bryars' The Sinking of the Titanic (1969) builds from the hymn reportedly played by the ship's string musicians as it went down, layering orchestral material around a slowly submerging harmonic core. Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet (1971) is constructed from a looped recording of a homeless man singing a brief improvised hymn, over which increasingly rich accompaniment gradually accrues. Both works treat duration, repetition and the relationship between recorded and live sound as primary compositional materials. Bryars' trajectory, from free improvisation with Derek Bailey and Tony Oxley through his association with Brian Eno's Obscure Records to decades of work at the intersection of minimalism, early music and recording-as-medium, makes this programme a direct precursor to the concerns of The Infinite Now. The evening also includes the work Pure Voices by Aleksandra Słyż, which she will perform live with the orchestra, following a recent show at New York’s Alice Tully Hall.

This is the third and final prelude concert at Kraftwerk Berlin leading into The Infinite Now, the first formal collaboration between Berlin Atonal and Unsound. The thirty-hour continuous programme begins at Kraftwerk Berlin on Saturday 16 May and runs without interruption until Sunday 17 May.

Arrangör: Berlin Atonal