Barrie Gavin was born in London in 1935. He joined the BBC in 1961 as an assistant film editor. Two years later he began to direct programmes, largely but not exclusively about music. He has directed approximately 180 documentaries in his career. He specialised in films about contemporary music, establishing long-running working partnerships with artists like Pierre Boulez and Simon Rattle. There have also been collaborations with composers like Stockhausen, Berio, Nono, Birtwistle, John Adams and many others. In 1977 he made his first film in Germany for Hessischer Rundfunk. It was a portrait of Kurt Weill. For the next 25 years he worked extensively in Germany for Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Sudwest Rundfunk, Sender Freies Berlin and most frequently for Hessischer Rundfunk.
In addition to the documentary output he has televised some 250 concerts and relays of operas, in Britain, Germany and the USA.
He has been awarded prizes at festivals in Canada, the USA, Ireland, and Germany. In 2008 he was given anaward by the International Confederation of Music Publishers for his services to modern music on television.In June 2009 he will be invited to present a retrospective of his work at the Golden Prague Television Festival.
He continues to be engaged in television, most notably in a recent continuing project creating music projects on the internet for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He also still pursues an interest in the music of our time and has completed a film on the educational work in the Balkans by the British composer Nigel Osborne. In the cutting room at present is a portrait of the composer Jonathan Harvey.