Jazz Articles about Barry Guy

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Barry Guy / London Jazz Composers Orchestra / Irene Schweizer: Radio Rondo

by Nic Jones
January 21, 2010

Radio Rondo was recorded at a Swiss jazz festival in May of 2008. The program is split into two halves, the first of which is a Irene Schweizer solo; the second, featuring the pianist in the company of bassist Barry Guy and his longstanding orchestra.

What makes the music notable is the degree to which it's reflective of fearsome intelligence at work. As a pianist, Schweizer has taken the time-honored route in her working through influences and emerging with her ...

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Barry Guy London Jazz Composers Orchestra / Irene Schweizer: Radio Rondo / Schaffhausen Concert

by AAJ Italy Staff
January 7, 2010

Perseguendo dopo oltre un lustro la grande idea di Michael Mantler che, nel 1964 diede il la all'avventura della celebrata Jazz Composer's Orchestra, Barry Guy, contrabbassista e compositore londinese, fonda nel 1974 una formazione che resterà per almeno 30 anni ineguagliata fucina di creatività e di alta esemplificazione di arte musicale. La London Jazz Composers Orchestra è ancora oggi citata quale ecumenico esempio di comunione fra patrimonio classico per eccellenza e architettura jazz. La line-up chiama a raccolta una ventina ...

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Ken Vandermark / Barry Guy / Mark Sanders: Fox Fire

by Mark Corroto
September 24, 2009

The audience has been removed from these live concerts, recorded in 2008 in Birmingham and Leeds, featuring American reedman Ken Vandermark alongside British drummer Mark Sanders and bassist Barry Guy. Despite the constraints of a short, five-day UK tour of only six concerts, there's much to savor in the resulting two discs, for connoisseurs of creative music.

Granted, there is no such thing as a “perfect" freely improvised recording. Listening to a recording is different from attending the ...

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Barry Guy: Ode to a Bassist

by A. Henkin
May 24, 2009

In 2007, just in time for bassist Barry Guy's 60th birthday, Intakt Records released Portrait, equal parts compilation, introduction, overview and mere glimpse into the musical world of this instrumentalist, composer and bandleader. There are tracks from several editions of Guy's colossal London Jazz Composers Orchestra (LJCO), pieces done with longstanding collaborators like Evan Parker and more recent groups such as his New Orchestra or trio with pianist Agusti Fernandez and percussionist Ramon Lopez. In between are solo works demonstrating ...

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Barry Guy / Marilyn Crispell / Paul Lytton: Phases Of The Night

by Nic Jones
July 6, 2008

Any subversion of the piano trio tradition as manifested in the clinical virtuosity of a technocratic elite is always welcome, and it's present here in abundance. This is not however to suggest that this trio lacks technique, it's just that the music they produce is so free of the constraints of any overt tradition that the results are compelling.

Listeners need hear no further than the opening title track for evidence. Pianist Marilyn Crispell, bassist Barry Guy, and drummer Paul ...

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Barry Guy/Mats Gustafsson/Raymond Strid: Tarfala

by Mark Corroto
March 15, 2008

I've read interviews with jazz musicians that have told of their first hearing John Coltrane's LP A Love Supreme (Impulse!,1964) and their seemingly inability to turn over the vinyl and play the second side, fearing that it would not compare to the first side. This listener had a similar experience listening to the first (and title) track of this recording. Clocking in at more than twenty seven minutes, it is an entire meal in itself, leaving one satisfied or wondering ...

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Evan Parker/Barry Guy/Paul Lytton: Zafiro

by Matthew Sumera
August 26, 2007

It's hard to account for longevity among freely improvised groups. One somehow assumes that part of the success of much of the genre relies upon the newness of encounter--flirting with the unknown that presumably can only come from fresh associations. This, of course, is one of the myths of free improvisation, for in truth there are any number of long-standing groups that have defined the heights of the genre: AMM, Alexander von Schlippenbach's trio (with Evan Parker and Paul Lovens) ...