Barry Guy Blue Shroud Band: all this this here

Bassist and composer Barry Guy combines a number of his passions on All This This Here in a stunning act of synthesis. For the third major work for his Blue Shroud Band, following its eponymous debut (Intakt, 2016) and Odes And Meditations For Cecil Taylor (Not Two, 2018), Guy sets to music Nobel winning playwright Samuel Beckett's last poem What Is The Word (in two versions, both the original French and the English translation, which bookend the program).

Guy has long been fascinated by Beckett, who provided the conceptual frame for Fizzles (Maya, 1993), albeit without invoking words, and Time Passing..... (Maya, 2015) which excerpts the playwright'sPing. He also finds correspondence in three other texts from different sources similarly dealing with "life in transit" which he incorporates between the two renditions, drawing inspiration from two Eighteenth century Japanese haikus, a poem by Irish writer Barra O'Seaghdha and another by Beckett.

Just as the words derive from a rich variety of traditions, so does the music. One unique feature of the Blue Shroud Band is that it brings together skilled practitioners of Baroque music with seasoned improvisers, and those like Guy with a foot in both worlds, as well as those of contemporary classical and jazz. With such a rich menu the danger is that it confuses and one flavor overwhelms another. It is Guy's genius that he is able to unite them into a coherent whole.

In what must be a logistical nightmare, the 14-strong ensemble contains nine nationalities. Remarkably the line up has remained almost entirely unchanged since the outfit's 2014 unveiling, having only replaced Peter Evans with Percy Pursglove on trumpet and Michel Godard with Marc Unternährer on tuba. Apart from the consistently stimulating and challenging nature of the material, another explanation for such stability must be the way in which Guy intuits settings which show off each member of the band to best advantage.

Versatile vocalist Savina Yannatou delivers Beckett's words, recited on the opening "Comment Dire," sung on the closing "What Is The Word," over floating tonalities which echo the halting, circling back on itself, nature of the text. But thereafter she extemporizes guttural and syllables as fragments of 17th century composer Pelham Humfrey's courtly music appear, with Fanny Pacoud's viola and Michael Niesemann's oboe d'amore prominent, only to gradually loosen their moorings as they fray into improv. That alternation recurs throughout the piece. Such description gives just the merest indication of the intricate plotting which is way beyond explication, but which inextricably draws the listener in.

Furthermore each section furnishes opportunities for individual expression which arise organically from the performance. For instance early in the first rendition Pursglove's supple trumpet comes to the fore in a series of liquid waspish fanfares, while later Unternährer's tuba fluidly weaves around Agusti Fernandez' thickly voiced piano in a swirling pas de deux.

In overall terms, that appealing dichotomy between forthright grandeur and unmoored exchanges surfaces again on "Waiting" and also elsewhere. Then as if to offer a counterbalance, the group transforms into a surging jazzy big band fuelled by twin drummers Ramon Lopez and Lucas Niggli on the two "Time Things," which serve as vehicles for the four saxophonists Torben Snekkestad, Niesemann, Per Texas Johansson and Julius Gabriel, to wax visceral. Even here, the accompaniment periodically falls away to leave the reedmen treading air, before triumphantly renewing the uplifting sprint. The strings come into their own on "Lysandra," where after her bravura acrobatic solo Maya Homburger's violin meshes with Ben Dwyer's guitar and percussion in a vortex of chamber abstraction and flamenco whirl. And there's more, much more.

The packaging helpfully includes the texts, an overview from Guy and an erudite essay by author and film producer Jonathan Creasy explaining the genesis and construction of the work. Even at over 72-minutes the album, recorded in the studio in Portugal, is jam packed with event. With its vaulting ambition and spectacular execution it establishes yet another high water mark in Guy's work and demands in depth listening.

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