A live performance of Gavin Bryars’s acclaimed masterpiece Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet
[ID: photograph of a man wearing glasses and surrounded by other musicians. We see sheet music and other violins. He is holding his hands up to the audience and smiling]
Doors: 3:30pm
Tickets: £7 - £15
This event is part of the Raft Festival programme (see the main festival page on our website for full listings).
One-off tickets are available for every Raft event on a sliding scale basis. We encourage you to consider purchasing a ‘festival pass’ bundle ticket which will allow you, at a reduced rate, to access a given number of events across the full programme (either 5 events, 10 events, or all 30 events). See the link below for more details about these options!
Gavin Bryars’s “Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet” - Live at the Horse Hospital
Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet is a 1971 composition by internationally-acclaimed composer Gavin Bryars which is set to a looped 23-second recording of an unknown singer singing a brief stanza in the street. The piece was shortlisted for the 1993 Mercury Prize, and praised by The Guardian as ‘one of the 20th-century’s great musical works’.
Performers:
Viola: Katie Wilkinson, Camilla Derven
Cello: Audrey Riley, Ziella Bryars, Nick Cooper
Electric guitar: James Woodrow
Keyboard: Gavin Bryars
“In 1971, when I lived in London, I was working with a friend, Alan Power, on a film about people living rough in the area around Elephant and Castle and Waterloo Station. In the course of being filmed, some people broke into drunken song – sometimes bits of opera, sometimes sentimental ballads – and one, who in fact did not drink, sang a religious song “Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet”. This was not ultimately used in the film and I was given all the unused sections of tape, including this one.
When I played it at home, I found that his singing was in tune with my piano, and I improvised a simple accompaniment. I noticed, too, that the first section of the song – 13 bars in length – formed an effective loop which repeated in a slightly unpredictable way. I took the tape loop to Leicester, where I was working in the Fine Art Department, and copied the loop onto a continuous reel of tape, thinking about perhaps adding an orchestrated accompaniment to this. The door of the recording room opened on to one of the large painting studios and I left the tape copying, with the door open, while I went to have a cup of coffee. When I came back I found the normally lively room unnaturally subdued. People were moving about much more slowly than usual and a few were sitting alone, quietly weeping.
I was puzzled until I realised that the tape was still playing and that they had been overcome by the old man’s singing. This convinced me of the emotional power of the music and of the possibilities offered by adding a simple, though gradually evolving, orchestral accompaniment that respected the tramp’s nobility and simple faith. Although he died before he could hear what I had done with his singing, the piece remains as an eloquent, but understated testimony to his spirit and optimism.”
- Gavin Bryars.