In là

Venice Biennale edition.“In Là” is the outcome of a collaboration between Gavin Bryars and the Italian visual artist Massimo Bartolini. Staged as a large-scale installation at the Luigi Pecci Centre for Contemporary Art in Prato, Italy, during the autumn of 2022, Bartolini transformed scaffolding into pipe organ bars, suspended from the ceiling across seven rooms of the museum. It is the music played by these singular organs, composed by Bryars, that makes up the two sides of Alga Marghen’s stunning LP. The album’s cover is directly related to the installation and was specially designed by Bartolini for the release.

Encountering Bryars returning to some of the experimental and conceptual territory that defined his work during the early 1970s, prior to the composition of seminal works like “The Sinking of The Titanic” and “Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet”, “In Là” encounters the composer working across a vast amount of space, with the occurrences transpiring in each of the museum’s rooms placed in careful consideration of the next, while never fulling being able to be experienced in its totality by the listener. This allows the LP version of the work to become a singular complement to the live, real-time experience, unveiling phenomena and perceptions of the work’s rich tones and poetic structures that would otherwise be unavailable.