Jazz Articles about Barry Guy

About Barry Guy

Album Review

Jordina Millà, Barry Guy: Live in Munich

Read "Live in Munich" reviewed by Neri Pollastri

by Neri Pollastri
September 23, 2024

Stupefacente incontro tra generazioni diverse di improvvisatori, questo album documenta il concerto tenutosi nel Febbraio 2022 nella sala Schwere Reiter di Monaco di Baviera, di scena la pianista catalana residente a Salisburgo Jordina Millà e il contrabbassista inglese Barry Guy. Se di quest'ultimo è inutile aggiungere altro, trattandosi di uno dei grandi interpreti dell'improvvisazione europea dell'ultimo mezzo secolo, della pianista può invece essere utile dire che ha svolto solidi studi classici prima di imbattersi nel corregionale Agustí Fernández, altro magnifico ...

Album Review

Tony Oxley: Unreleased 1974 - 2016

Read "Unreleased 1974 - 2016" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
September 12, 2024

The British drummer and bandleader Tony Oxley passed in 2023, aged 85, after a career which began in the mid 1960s as the drummer in the house band at Ronnie Scott's club. From this prestigious but relatively codified platform, Oxley soon steered into less travelled waters. In 1969 he was in the quartet which recorded John McLaughlin's debut album, Extrapolation (Polydor). In the early 1970s, he began adding ring modulators, tone generators and other fx tools to his assemblage of ...

Album Review

Jordina Millà and Barry Guy: Live In Munich

Read "Live In Munich" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
August 3, 2024

There is an elusive, impossible logic to Live In Munich, an album that could sound so much like so many before it. But it does not. Because the music that roils tidal between Catalan pianist Jordina Millà and British bassist Barry Guy on their debut concert performance may be more the sound of creation than music as listeners have come to comfortably conceive it. Categorically ECM recordings contain creative fire and brimstone, symphonic contours, minimalist patina, and concepts ...

Album Review

Izumi Kimura, Barry Guy, Gerry Hemingway: Six Hands Open As One

Read "Six Hands Open As One" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
July 24, 2024

It should come as no surprise that three of contemporary music's great improvisers should obliterate the boundaries between composed and improvised music. This is the second collaboration between pianist Izumi Kimura, double bassist Barry Guy and drummer/percussionist Gerry Hemingway following Illuminated Silence (Fundacja Sluchaj, 2019), a visceral live document where improvisation played out within conceptual compositional frameworks. Six Hands As One charts a similar course, the trio responding to a range of stimuli including the natural elements, poetry and war. ...

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Album Review

Oliver Schwerdt: Fucking Ballads

Read "Fucking Ballads" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
May 6, 2024

Pianist Oliver Schwerdt's Fucking Ballads is not just an album title; it is a declaration of sonic defiance, a rallying cry for those who dare to challenge the status quo. The juxtaposition of the genteel term “ballads" with the bold expletive “fucking" sets the stage for a musical escapade that is as cheeky as it is profound. From the opening notes of the album, Schwerdt and his ensemble are on a mission to disrupt the conventions of jazz. ...

Album Review

Evan Parker - Barry Guy: So It Goes

Read "So It Goes" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
February 17, 2024

Two masters who have invented a (the?) lexicon for their instruments meet on So It Goes. British saxophonist Evan Parker and his compatriot bassist Barry Guy should need no introduction to anyone interested in European free improvisation. Both active since the 1970s, they remain vital forces even with as they both move into their eighth decade. Their association was formalized in 1980 with the inception of the long running trio completed by drummer Paul Lytton. But they have also appeared ...

Album Review

Barry Guy Blue Shroud Band: all this this here

Read "all this this here" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
October 17, 2023

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).