Gavin Bryars: An echo of times past

In a culture that delights in reducing the past to significant anniversaries, every classical concert nowadays appears to be celebrating something: the 75th birthday of this performer, the 50th anniversary of the death of that composer. It's not an approach to concert-planning that appeals to the composer Gavin Bryars, despite the fact that he celebrates his 60th birthday this month. Not that he dreads reaching this landmark, he says. "I'm indifferent to it, although at least it'll mean I can get cheaper rail tickets. Those kinds of anniversaries only have an impact on people who plan concerts. The BBC has an obsession with any number ending in a zero. I remember that when Nicholas Kenyon took over the Proms, I wrote suggesting that he should have a season without a single concert that celebrated any kind of anniversary."

Not much chance of that. Given classical music's anniversary obsession, it's surprising that Bryars's own 60th birthday will not be marked by any celebratory retrospectives, although this doesn't surprise Bryars himself. "You don't hear much of anything of mine in this country. Between 1969 and 1987, for example, I had nothing performed by the BBC, although after that, the Radio 3 producer Martin Cotton got the ball rolling for me, and more recently, I've enjoyed working with the BBC in Scotland. The lack of performances in this country doesn't particularly worry me, though. I'd be worried if I got no work anywhere, but I'm working all the time."

For Bryars, work is not only composition, but also performance, often with his own Gavin Bryars Ensemble, founded in 1981. He first made his mark as an improvising jazz double-bassist in the 1960s, moving on to an association with a group of composers (including Howard Skempton and Cornelius Cardew) whose work attracted the label "experimental music". Not coincidentally, that is the title of Michael Nyman's 1974 book, reprinted in 1999, which remains one of few studies to treat this neglected area of British music with any seriousness. With its fanciful titles (such as Bryars's own Serenely Beaming and Leaning on a Five-Barred Gate) and open-ended approach to composition and performance, the music of that "experimental" era lays itself open to ridicule in these more po-faced times.

Bryars, however, recalls the period with pride and affection. "I was involved in the experimental scene from the late 1960s through to about 1981, when Cornelius Cardew died. That world nurtured me, and I still have great respect for it. One of the things that defined that group of composers was that we were writing for each other as composer-performers. It was a kind of collective activity, a mutual self-help organisation if you like. I was often writing for quite heterogeneous ensembles, because that is what was thrown up by the personnel involved. The craft was in trying to make that combination sound right and natural, which was a good way of learning orchestration and instrumentation. You couldn't rely on formulae, on proven models. Instead you had to use your ear, your instincts, your own musical intelligence to be able to balance, let's say, tuba, tenor horn and double bass. In some ways, I'd say that I didn't move on that much, I simply moved into different circles. I've written operas, string quartets, concertos, things that people in the world of experimental music tend not to write."

Traces of Bryars's distant past resurface on Gavin Bryars: A Portrait, a two-CD collection that functions as the birthday celebration we won't get in the concert hall. The recordings date from the 1990s, as does most of the music. But there are also 1990s remixes of earlier works: The Sinking of the Titanic (1969) and Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet (1971). The former is a sub-aquatic fantasy on the music the band might have played as the Titanic sank; the latter uses a fragment of a hymn, quaveringly sung by a tramp, as the basis of a mysterious lament. Both works can exist in any number of forms: Bryars's 1990s recording of Jesus' Blood, using the voice of Tom Waits, has sold more than 250,000 copies.

The other works included in the Portrait show Bryars working with such celebrated soloists as Julian Lloyd Webber and John Harle. Slow-moving, defiantly tonal, the music he wrote for them retains links with Titanic and Jesus' Blood. And there is another aspect that ties them to Bryars the experimentalist: "For me, it's still important to write for specific musicians. I write for people rather than instruments. When I wrote Farewell to Philosophy for Julian, I knew his playing from recordings. He aims for a lyrical, singing approach to the cello, which suited me down to the ground. More recently I wrote a double bass concerto for Duncan McTier, and I spent a long time getting to know Duncan's playing, while also thinking about my own history with the double bass, my relationship to the jazz bass and to the classical bass. In the process the piece became a detailed meditation on the instrument, and on the people playing it."

Bryars's attitude to composition as in part a collaborative act finds a further reflection in his work, as both composer and performer, with his ensemble. He describes its members as "my best musical friends; in some cases, I've worked with them for more than 25 years. In their different ways, each has the qualities of a virtuoso, but they are also fine chamber musicians who represent the chamber-music values I take very seriously."

While a 60th birthday provides the opportunity to look back, the composer himself must, inevitably, look forward. He now spends part of his time living in Canada (where Jesus' Blood topped the pop charts in 1994), and has started his own record label, GB Records. Current projects include a set of madrigals, eventually to comprise seven Books, each written on a different day of the week – a typically Bryarsesque conceit that will occupy him for years to come. Retirement at 60? It's not an option.

'Gavin Bryars: A Portrait' is released by Philips on 10 February. The composer's website is at www.gavinbryars.com