ABSTRACT
In 1970, Gavin Bryars invited Steve Reich, who was in London, to play recordings of his recent compositions at a gathering that included many members of the Scratch Orchestra, the Promenade Theatre Orchestra and the Portsmouth Sinfonia. Bryars shared a large house with Evan Parker in north-west London; Christopher Hobbs temporarily sublet part of the first floor. The composers decided to entertain Reich in Hobbs’s room because it was the biggest; Bryars brought his Revox tape recorder downstairs, as it was the best. Reich played Four Organs (1970), the first time that it would have been heard in London. In return, Bryars played a recording of the William Tell overture by the Portsmouth Sinfonia, an ensemble of arts students and faculty often known as the ‘world’s worst orchestra’. Michael Nyman remembers that ‘the Anglo/ American love-in was stretched to its limits’ at this moment.1 Reich later hired several of these composers to play on his European tour of Drumming (1970-71), but for Nyman, Reich failed to ‘get’ the Sinfonia.2
