IRMA An Opera by Tom Philips LP Brian Eno Gavin Bryars

	£		21
	$		28

** RECORD COLLECTOR **

IRMA

An Opera by Tom Philips

Music by Gavin Bryars : Libretto by Fred Orton

Original UK LP released on Obscure Records in 1978. Produced by Brian Eno.

This version of IRMA /An Opera was a collaboration between British visual artist Tom Phillips (b.1937), composer Gavin Bryars for the music and art critic Fred Orton for the libretto. Completed 1969, Phillips’ IRMA graphic score is based on a 19th century novel he bought in 1966, A Human Document, by W.H. Mallock, and which subsequently served as the basis for numerous drawings, paintings and collages made directly on the book’s pages, some of them collected in the life-long, monumental masterpiece of visual poetry, A Humument: A Treated Victorian Novel, first published 1973 with several expanded reissues since. A Humument is a regular graphic novel with a plot and recurring characters Grenville and Irma, also appearing in the opera. The graphic score of IRMA was first published in Henri Chopin‘s sound poetry magazine OU in 1970 and was staged in a concert version in Bordeaux that same year. The UK premiere took place at the University of Newcastle in 1972.

A self-taught pianist himself, Phillips had included a music part in his graphic score. Apparently, this LP uses completely different music and is actually a re-creation of IRMA. Gavin Bryars entered the map in 1977, when Brian Eno asked him to write a score for IRMA, to be published in the Obscure LP series. Eno knew Phillips since 1964, when, aged 16, he became a student at Ipswich School of Art, where Phillips was a teacher. A Phillips painting was used on the cover of Another Green World in 1975. The elliptic, almost semaphoric texts surfacing in Phillips’ IRMA score certainly resonated in Eno as a possible entry in British Minimalism, providing the appropriate music would be added.

The cast includes Howard Skempton as Grenville, Lucy Skeaping as Irma, (Angela Bryars and Tom Phillips joining for chorus), with orchestra directed by Gavin Bryars. The instrumental parts are pure Gavin Bryars, that is, elegant, delicate ensemble musings going absolutely nowhere in the most charming way. The arias are exquisite melodies, softly enunciating the elliptic sentences of the libretto as if surrounded by a soft white gauze.

Tracks Are :-

Side One

Introduction

Overture and Aria ("I tell you that's Irma herself")

First Interlude

Side Two

Aria ("Irma you will be mine")

Second Interlude

Chorus ("Love is help mate")

Postlude

Released on 'Obscure Records' in 1978

Catalogue No. OBS 9

Disc is in EX+ condition

Sleeve is in VG+ condition (sticker mark / general wear)

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