News
NEWS
TWO NEW RELEASES ON MAYA RECORDINGS :
Double LP "BARRY GUY PLAYS" MLP2401
Essay (1975) Luca Lombardi
Ausdrücke - Rondo for a Clown (1978) Hubert Stuppner
Theraps (1976) Iannis Xenakis
Memo I (1971) Bernard Rands
Voicings (1977) John Anthony Celona
Anaklasis (2002) Barry Guy
The bass music you will hear on this album is, it might be said, a child of the seventies. A ferociously radical time in the development of the double bass as a solo instrument found composers eager to formulate soundscapes that would send our Bottesinis and Dragonettis running for the exit !
As an emerging bassist in these heady times, immersed deeply into the art of improvisation where almost on a daily basis colleagues pushed the boundaries of instrumental possibilities, I found myself additionally being drawn into the world of composed music, researching novel sonorities and extended techniques. Somehow the two disciplines (in those days they were mutually suspicious of each other) seemed to coalesce around a large wooden box with strings attached. The double bass was everything you wanted it to be !
In my studio, various archive recordings from the seventies of dubious sound quality have silently collected dust (and years) in various boxes, and a recent tidying of these surviving articles prompted a little retrospective listening. This revealed a rather exciting slice of double bass history which I thought might be of interest, but a genius was needed to bring these various recordings into a sound frame that would make sense. Ferran Conangla (Barcelona) is the genius that brought all this together - a sound engineer who I have recorded with many times, and a man who knows how to deliver a vibrant sound picture of the double bass.
Barry Guy
NEW CD on Maya Recordings - MCD2402 Kouartéto
with
Savina Yannatou - voice
Floros Floridis - clarinet, bass clarinet
Barry Guy - bass
Ramón López - drums and tabla
We recorded this CD in May 2023 on the magical Greek island of Hydra in the Old Carpet Factory Studio. The title Kouartéto emanates from the cover image by the artist William Pownall who in the true spirit of Hydra has for many years been an important focus for visitors seeking original artistic creations. And so, in this spirit. The music on this CD reflects a multifaceted response to a multicultural and open understanding of how artists can work together.
From the liner notes by Marc Medwin:
Every project involving these four creative spirits, here residing under the umbrella-appellation “The Hydra Quartet,” is a gathering of fluidities, magical continua fixed in time even in passing. Barry Guy and Ramón López share documented histories similar to those of Savina Yannatou and Floros Floridis, performing and recording in duos brimming with the possibilities of seismic transcendence.
Like the dream images of the lullabies or the place names and boundary demarcations altering with the political tides, the music transports itself and its auditioners through and beyond cultural and chronological divides, building dunes and castles of those shifting sands we so often believe, not without reason, to comprise solid ground. The final piece captures the music’s entire emotive range, from Yannatou’s heartbreaking cries, then descending toward the fluty vibrato with which Floridis leads the whispered pitches, so reminiscent of the concluding moments of Beethoven’s final piano sonata, simply, gently but ineluctably toward silence.
ROUGH by Barry Guy
We are pleased to release this link to the recording of Barry Guy's composition "Rough"
based on Samuel Beckett's "Rough for Radio I" with the great Swiss Ensemble Camerata Variabile
together with the amazing American Soprano Katherine Dain.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rApHXRXOtzw
BLUE SHROUD BAND in Krakow 19. - 24. November 2024
The residency in Krakow to celebrate 10 years of the BLUE SHROUD BAND
and the appearance of the ADAM quartet performing Barry Guy's string quartet
"what is the word" was all we had hoped for !
please read the report by John Sharpe :
www.allaboutjazz.com/barry-guys-blue-shroud-band-ten-year-anniversary-barry-guy
New CD on the Maya Recordings Label :
MCD2401 LIVE AT JAZZDOR with Angelica Sanchez, Barry Guy and Ramon Lopez
www.mayarecordings.bandcamp.com/album/live-at-jazzdor
available also from info@maya-recordings.com
New CD has just been released on ECM
Jordina Millà - Barry Guy LIVE IN MUNICH
www.ecmrecords.com/product/live-in-munich-jordina-milla-barry-guy/
Jordina Millà: piano; Barry Guy: double bass
This live recording, from Munich’s Schwere Reiter hall, documents the debut concert performance by the duo of Catalan pianist Jordina Millà and British bassist Barry Guy. Together they shape fluid, highly detailed music, of ever changing mood, and cast fresh light on the meaning and possibilities of “extended technique” in free improvisation.
The musicians first crossed paths at Barcelona’s Mixtur Festival in 2017 where Guy was composer-in-residence, creating a piece together with a mixed festival ensemble of professionals and students. Millà, as one of the pianists in the group, immediately stood out for her “commitment, energy, virtuosity and creativity,” and a musical friendship was established.
Guy and Millà went on to record a studio album together, String Fables, for the Polish label Fundacja Słuchaj in 2021. Live In Munich represents a major advance in its depth of sound and range of expression, with remarkable clarity even at moments of most intense activity.
In characterizing their swirling, undulating sound, Jordina Millà draws analogies with the movements of the sea, “so full of life and dark at the same time, a change of light making the treasures and wonders visible.” In the duo, “heightened listening and sensibility allowed colours and sudden changes to be perceived, expressed and established in the musical discourse.”
Barry Guy, renowned for his improvisational capacity to reveal the full sonorous potential of the double bass, is well-partnered here by Millà, who – in addition to her formidable keyboard skills – is opening up a new world of sound with her inventive explorations of the piano interior, drawing arresting textures and glistening harmonics from its harp of strings. “To work with these colours,” says Barry Guy, “is a great challenge and joy!”
After studying classical and contemporary music in Rotterdam and Paris and playing in diverse chamber groups, Jordina Millà was guided towards the improvisers’ world by Agustì Fernandez, éminence grise of the Spanish free scene, who has been a mentor and a supporter of her work. Fernandez was quick to note the originality of Millà’s approach, writing in 2018: “We feel Jordina breathing through the piano. How does she manage to create dreamlike atmospheres, travel landscapes that are so suggestive and gorgeous, energetic and sweet at the same time…?”
In addition to her work in improvisation, Jordina Millà is active in several dance and theatre projects, including Tide Mountains, a new collaboration with choreographers Roberta Legros and Julyen Hamilton.
Barry Guy has been at the forefront of creative music for more than 50 years. One of the so-called “first generation” of UK improvisers who established the language of free playing in Britain in the late 1960s, he has been active across the idioms in many roles – as soloist, chamber musician, baroque music performer, leader of the London Jazz Composer’s Orchestra and more. He has also held principal bass position in various orchestras including The Orchestra of St. John’s Smith Square, City of London Sinfonia, Monteverdi Orchestra, The Academy of Ancient Music, Kent Opera and The London Classical Players.
His appearances on ECM include the album Folio with Guy’s compositions played by the Munich Chamber Orchestra, the duo album Ceremony with Maya Homburger, and his collaboration with the Hilliard Ensemble on A Hilliard Songbook. He can also be heard as a member of John Potter’s Dowland Project (In Darkness Let Me Dwell, Care-Calming Sleep, Night Sessions), the Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble (Toward The Margins, Drawn Inward, Memory Vision, The Moment’s Energy) and the Evan Parker/Roscoe Mitchell-led Transatlantic Art Ensemble (Boustrophedon, Composition/Improvisation Nos. 1, 2 & 3). For Guy’s complete ECM discography: www.ecmrecords.com
LIMITED EDITION of STATEMENTS V-XI , BARRY GUY, solo bass
this special limited edition of Barry Guy's first solo LP is now getting very rare, and there are only
10 copies for sale with original art work by either Barry Guy himself or by the following artists:
Vanche (Belgium) - Hans Husel (Germany) - Jan Erik Willgohs (Norway) - Paul Mosse (Ireland)
Price enquiries and orders : please contact Mats Gustafsson - mats@matsgus.com
Barry Guy, featured in Duncan Heining's latest book
The limited edition hardback version of Duncan Heining’s brilliant book ‘And Did Those Feet… Six British Jazz Composers’ has sold out!
BUT, it’s now available WORLDWIDE in a paperback edition via Amazon’s ‘print on demand’ service.
www.jazzinbritain1.bandcamp.com/merch/and-did-those-feet-six-british-jazz-composers-by-duncan-heining
Recent release on our Maya Recordings Label :
SO IT GOES... MCD2301
LIVE Recording from The Hot Tin, Faversham - 4. February 2023
We have the great pleasure to announce the release of a new Duo CD with
Evan Parker - tenor and soprano saxophones and Barry Guy - double bass.
Their playing is best summed up with a short excerpt from the blog by Martin Schray
written a few years ago on the occasion of a duo concert in Zurich, during which concert
also the photographs were taken which we used for this album.
(photographer sadly unknown)
“......Evan Parker and Barry Guy are always a perfect match. Both have known each other since the big bang of British improv in the 1960s.....their nearly patented individual styles have become free jazz history and so it was no surprise that they didn’t need time to warm up to come to the point. Both played marvelous loud/quiet passages, especially when Guy’s overtones met Parker’s circular breathing. Or, as Parker once put it: "Effectively, we're just machines turning sunlight into music." Their music was full of meticulous details about the idea of communicating and both deployed a musical empathy, which was simply sensational - even after such a long time of playing together...”
other news:
Barry Guy's short composition WAITING written for the Calmus Ensemble relates directly to "all this this here" for the Blue Shroud Band, since it is based on Barra Ó Seaghdha’s beautiful poem "Waiting" which forms the second part of the big band composition.
Listen to it here :
www.youtube.com/watch?v=14Z1yPieASo&list=PLCUOrDr0MbX3Hy3NLmXeqUk0zqDgry4wv&index=10
ALL THIS THIS HERE
The recording with the BLUE SHROUD BAND of Barry Guy's composition "all this this here" is available from :
www.sluchaj.bandcamp.com/album/all-this-this-here-2
from the liner notes by Barry Guy :
The title of this new work for the Blue Shroud Band comes from Samuel Beckett’s “what is the word“, his last poem and an elegiac meditation on language.
Additionally to “what is the word”, I have also used one of Beckett’s late poems “Brief Dream” which refers to the theme of transiting life and the acceptance of ending - “go end there / one fine day” and Barra Ó Seaghdha’s (Irish writer and poet) evocative poem “Waiting” .
Two 18th century Edo Haiku complete the texts featured in this piece that collectively focus on life in transit.
you can also order this CD directly from us by writing to info@maya-recordings.com
Two BLUE SHROUD films are now easy to see on-line:
THE DOCUMENTARY FILM by Jonathan Creasy from 2019.
www.theblueshroud.com/feature
please click on the Picasso painting and insert the password Guernica321
and
THE LIVE CONCERT from our performance in the Purcell Room London during the London Jazz Festival November 2019
www.theblueshroud.com/concert
MAGICAL MOBILES
by Barry Guy for bass clarinet and violin
We just received this U tube Link to a very nice live recording of
this composition from February 2020.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyflOxELlkg
The LJCO Box set with 6 CDs released by Marek Winiarski on his NOTTWO Label
Not Two Records MW-2 1027-2
has been honoured with the « German Record Critics’ Award »
as a recording of exceptional artistry and selected as one of the
« Quarterly Best » of New Releases for the First Quarter 2023
Homburger / Guy Duo with Lucas Niggli , percussion
ACANTHIS MCD2201
Maya Homburger - violin, Barry Guy - bass, Lucas Niggli - percussion
with compositions by György Kurtág , Barry Guy and Lucas Niggli
On this recording we have elected to offer a programme that is concurrent with our present times but we still want to promote the idea of “musical stretching”. No baroque music (this still happens though in our duo recitals) but a chance to hear some of the exquisite music by the iconic Hungarian composer György Kurtág, who cites J.S. Bach as one of his favourite composers. Observe for instance Kurtág’s “Hommage à J.S.B.” which is spiritually related to the Double of Bach’s d minor Allemande BWV1004. We also have been privileged to receive a piece arranged by György Kurtág for our duo - “Hommage à Eberhard Feltz” based upon Samuel Beckett’s poem “Roundelay”.
Lucas Niggli joined us to create colourful and original improvisations with an uncanny knack of playing the right sound at precisely the moment where the written music invited an intervention. So, in “Celebration” and “Rondo for Nine Birds” (inspired by a beautiful drawing by the English artist Fred Hellier) Lucas had full reign to improvise imaginative counterpoints. In “Andeutende Dynamik” (my composition based on a triptych by the Hungarian artist András Wolsky) he plays with us on the through - composed score which included improvised moments inspired by the paintings.
The recording duties were taken care of by Adrian Hart, a violinist himself who fully understood and participated in the structuring of the soundscape which supports the varied music that this album offers.
We hope that this magical mystery tour continues to stretch the musical imagination. Barry Guy
Diese neue CD auf unserem Maya Recordings Label präsentiert für einmal nicht eine Mischung von «old and new» sondern Neue Musik von György Kurtág und Barry Guy. Mit unserem langjährigen Freund und musikalischen Partner Lucas Niggli entstehen sowohl freie Improvisationen als auch Klangwelten die Barry in «Andeutende Dynamik» speziell für unser Trio kreiert hat. Dieses Werk ist inspiriert vom Triptychon des ungarischen Künstlers András Wolsky und die Idee zu «Rondo for Nine Birds» verdanken wir Fred Hellier’s (London ) Zeichnung «nine birds».
For mail orders please visit our website : www.mayarecordings.com/buy_cds
Or send us an e mail on maya@aglais.ch
If you prefer a digital version of this new CD, please visit : www.mayarecordings.bandcamp.com
TWO BOX Sets with 5 and 6 CDs have been released by Marek Winiarski on his NOTTWO Label
On these recordings you will find an amazing series of concerts from the "Barry Guy and Friends Residency" in November 2018
including on CD Number 5 the première of Barry's composition "for to end yet again".
And also the complete set of recordings from the London Jazz Composers Orchestra 50th anniversary celebration days in March 2020. On CD Number 6 there is a stunning performance of Harmos-Krakow which alone is worth buying the whole set !
www.nottwo.com/mw1031
and
www.nottwo.com/mw1027
"FLYWAYS"
Barry Guy's composition for the ensemble CAMERATA VARIABILE who commissioned him to create a piece for Mezzo Soprano, Piano and String Quartet, was premièred on 9. March in the "Kirche St. Peter" , Zürich. This occasion was filmed and recorded live.
www.vimeo.com/768431819
The wish of the ensemble was, that the piece might relate to bird migration.
A small excerpt from the text created for this composition by our Irish poet friend Barra Ó Seaghdha :
If they had remained
If they had remained on the ground
If they had remained
If they had not risen
If the birds had not risen
If that bird-mass had not abruptly risen
If their unruly upward burst had not so quickly resolved into a fluent order, before us and beyond us
If…
How would we have felt the silence before they rose?
How would we have known?
Was there silence before they rose?
Now we hear the silence before they rose.
We tell ourselves there was silence before they rose.
There was silence
from Barry's programme note:
Barra’s many facetted expressions on the subject suggested musical resolutions that slip and slide according to the tensions offered in his text. My task has been therefore to combine all of his thoughts into a rational tapestry of sounds that allow us to fly with the birds, so to speak.
Nice new photo gallery of Barry Guy on the following website :
www.tomajazz.com/web/?p=51537
