The Cockpit Ensemble

According to the composer Gavin Bryars, "For the recording of Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet, for example, I had to hire many orchestral musicians, including of the horn section of the BBC Symphony Orchestra. But the list of personnel on the recording has none of their names, nor those of the woodwind section, nor the brass (except for John White, tuba), and the strings only list John Nash and Sandra Hill and no one else. These professional players really hated the music and they left quickly at the end of the sessions, leaving their invoices and insisting that their names should not appear in the album credits, saying that this could “damage their reputations”. Consequently we employed the name “The Cockpit Ensemble” as a catchall name to cover this."