Gavin Bryars

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the experimental composer Gavin Bryars. One of his best-known works, The Sinking of the Titanic, pays tribute to the band which continued to play as the ship went down. It poses the question what if they hadn't stop playing; how would their music have sounded under water? His most popular composition, Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet, features a tramp singing the same verse again and again, building up layer upon layer of emotion.

Composing is a craft he learnt as an assistant to John Cage, after hearing his work Four minutes, thirty-three seconds - of silence. Today he is both established and establishment - the ENO are soon to stage his latest opera and if you look closely at the orchestra, you'll spot him on the bass!

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: My Foolish Heart by Bill Evans Trio Book: Science and Civilisation in China by Joseph Needham Luxury: Gravity chair

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Avsnitt(124)

Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber

Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber

Sue Lawley's guest this week is Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber. His musicals dominate London's West End, including Cats, Phantom of the Opera and Starlight Express. He traces a career which began more than 3...

31 Dec 199936min

Michael Crawford

Michael Crawford

Sue Lawley's guest this week is Michael Crawford. Renowned for his attention to detail, he has always performed his own stunts - whether roller-skating under moving lorries in Some Mothers Do Have 'Em...

24 Dec 199936min

Michael Nyman

Michael Nyman

Sue Lawley's guest this week is Michael Nyman. Said to be the best-selling classical composer in Britain, as a child visiting the opera or concert hall his imagination would be caught by a particularl...

19 Dec 199937min

Oz Clarke

Oz Clarke

Sue Lawley's guest this week is Oz Clarke. As a wine expert, he has sipped, slurped and spat his way through thousands of vintages from around the world. Renowned for his enthusiasm for trying new fla...

12 Dec 199935min

Sir Richard Sykes

Sir Richard Sykes

Sue Lawley's guest this week is Sir Richard Sykes. The chairman of Glaxo Welcome, as a boy he was not a natural scholar, until he went to work at the pathology laboratory of his local hospital. Unders...

5 Dec 199938min

Warren Mitchell

Warren Mitchell

Sue Lawley's guest this week is Warren Mitchell. Arthur Miller praised his portrayal of Willie Loman in Death of a Salesman. His King Lear and Shylock won critical acclaim. But he will always be remem...

28 Nov 199937min

Clarissa Dickson Wright

Clarissa Dickson Wright

Sue Lawley's guest this week is Clarissa Dickson Wright.Born into a home where caviar was more common than fish paste, she has always been surrounded by fine food. Yet she came to cooking as a profess...

21 Nov 199935min

William Gibson

William Gibson

This week the castaway on Desert Island Discs is William Gibson. Long before the existence of the Internet, he wrote about 'cyberspace', a boundless world reached only through computers. External spac...

19 Nov 199934min

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