Reviews

Reviews

"Guy is, of course, nothing short of a phenomenon, what with his, in the best sense of the word, sagacious blend of passion, all manner of technique, lightning fast response time and multitude of stylistic inferences."
Cadence


“.....Das experimentellste Werk das er an diesem Abend spielte, waren seine “Five Fizzles” für Kontrabass solo. In Anlehnung an eine sogenannte Reihe kurzer Prosastücke Samuel Becketts besteht die Komposition aus fünf musikalischen Miniaturen ganz unterschiedlichen Charakters. Guy strich, zupfte, schlug und streichelte seinen Kontrabas auf alle erdenklichen Weisen und entlockte ihm Klänge und Geräusche, die man nicht für möglich gehalten hätte. Und doch hat diese Musik nichts Konstruiert-Avantgardistisches an sich, sondern wirkte sehr urtümlich, erdverbunden, vital. Ähnliches lässt sich auch von “Inachis” sagen, einer Kompsition für Solovioline, zu der Guy auf dem Kontrabass spontane Reaktionen anbrachte. Zum Schluss spielte Maya Homburger nochmals eine Sonate von Biber. Sie gestaltete sie derart frei und emotional, dass man plötzlich unsicher wurde, ob es sich da wirklich um ein barockes Werk handelte.
(Thomas Schacher, NZZ, 7. April 2006)


Review for TIME PASSING... by Ben Dwyer
for soprano, improvising voice, bass baritone and string orchestra by Barry Guy.
Please use the following link to read the excellently written review by the Irish composer and guitarist Ben Dwyer:

www.musicandliterature.org/reviews/2016/5/31/barry-guys-time-passing

This CD is available for mailorder and also on our band camp site


Reviews for Folio (ECM 1931) with Barry Guy, Maya Homburger, Muriel Cantoreggi, Münchener Kammerorchester, Christoph Poppen

Jazzman - Choc du mois

Not since Penderecki’s heyday have I been so bowled over by music which so compellingly fuses startlingly inventive and ear-tingling string textures and timbres with the emotional passion and drive of a “Verklärte Nacht” or “Metamorphosen”. … The starting point for Folio was provided by Nicolai Evreinov’s play The Theatre of the Soul, which, to quote Guy, ‘demarcates characters into the rational, emotional and subconscious aspects of the soul’. This helps structure the music’s textural multi-layering and architectural shape, which is experienced as though part of a dream-like trance. Maya Homburger’s Baroque violin plays the role of the ‘emotional’, while Barry Guy’s double bass improvisations symbolise ‘rationality’ and Muriel Cantoreggi’s modern violin and the Munich strings represent the ‘subconscious’. … So charismatically involving is this truly virtuoso performance that at times … it feels as though the entire ensemble might literally explode with excitement. With only twelve players in the orchestra, everyone becomes a soloist, and the result is a stunningly engineered rollercoaster ride of unremitting emotional intensity.
Julian Haylock, The Strad

The hour-long Folio was Barry Guy’s response to a very specific commission from the BT Scottish Ensemble… It was, though, a prescription tailor-made for Guy: as well as a composer he is also a double-bass virtuoso who makes regular forays into the jazz world, and his wife Maya Homburger is a distinguished baroque violinist. The result of all these happy connections is an intriguing, multi-faceted work: a sequence of self-contained pieces linked by a series of improvised commentaries for the double bass and baroque violin, which carries its considerable weight of extra-musical associations lightly. … However, the textures and the command of musical layering and string techniques are impressive on their own terms.
Andrew Clements, The Guardian

Folio is a hugely ambitious piece. It consists of a series of improvisations for Barry Guy’s own double bass, sometimes with Maya Homburger’s baroque violin, interspersed with five movements for Muriel Cantoreggi’s modern violin and string orchestra. Additionally, there are two sequences, based on Diego Ortiz’s Recercada Primera of 1553, serving as a bridge between baroque violin and modern instruments. … He proves himself a composer of sure instincts with this absorbing work, which combines spontaneity and shapeliness, stasis and excitement.
Stephen Pettitt, Sunday Times

L’œuvre … tresse et alterne partitions orchestrales et improvisations de l’un ou de deux des solistes. Pas plus que le langage instrumental du contrebassiste, les improvisations des deux violons n’étonneront les habitués des musique improvisées européennes, mais on reste confondu par le naturel qui les portent cette écriture libre de tout dogmatisme et qui nouent ensemble les deux discours en un matériau d’une aussi peu discutable cohérence.
Franck Bergerot, Jazzman


other reviews :

"When certain musicians have been central to your musical landscape for two thirds of your life, when innumerable words have been written about them by some of the most distinguished commentators, when their command of instrumental technique and improvisational inventiveness is beyond all reasonable question, and when you have enthused about them on numerous occasions, what is there left to say? What you said in the first place: listen."
Wire, Oct. 98, Barry Witherden

"Barry Guy proved in his solo that he is the most awesome bassist in improvised music."
Downbeat, October 1993

"... Guy is master of his instrument and servant of a questing imagination that constantly transforms daunting abstraction into the strangely beautiful ..."
Graham Lock

"... While the greatest entertainment was provided by the closing Stuppner, the strongest musical impression was made by the rapidly slithering runs and two-part harmonics of Xenakis' Theraps, a piece which Guy himself described as taking the player 'to the edge ... and beyond'. An area on the double bass where there's hardly a better guide than Barry Guy."
Irish Times

"For a complete contrast, Guy played five short improvisations he called Fizzles. Adding to his impressively varied repertoire of plucked and bowed sounds, he used a whole table full of paintbrushes and drumsticks, even the kind of wire brush that swing drummers use to create a soft wash for a romantic ballad. He performed the piece at breakneck pace, his hands moving over the entire course of the five-string bass from scroll to tailpiece in a blur, hands and fingers flashing like stroboscopic lightning bolts. Even more incredible than this display of superb athleticism, the music that came out was intelligible, intricate and altogether fascinating."
Stephen Pederson, Halifax, Nov. 1999

"... The visual or theatrical element is always present, especially in the bewildering complexity of his hand movements ... Barry Guy strays right to the edge of music and beyond, where only the bravest will follow."
Douglas Sealy (Irish Times, April 1999)

Five Fizzles for S. B.

Barry Guy: Five Fizzles For Samuel Beckett
by John Sharpe

Not to be confused with Fizzles (Maya, 1993), which contains the first documented version of the titular work along with other pieces for solo bass, Five Fizzles for Samuel Beckett is a 14 minute limited edition EP which does what it says on the tin. Virtuoso British bassist Barry Guy has long drawn inspiration from other art forms, especially writings and visual works. Beckett wrote eight texts between 1960 and 1976, seven written in French (under the title Foirades which was translated as "Fizzles," although it also possesses other meanings, including notably "wet fart" as Beckett was well aware) and one, "Still," in English.

In an interview with Declan O'Driscoll published in Music & Literature No. 4 (2014) Guy explains: "Each Fizzle is a short compressed outburst -literary chamber music of great power and beauty. It occurred to me that these "outbursts" could form the basis for little improvisations , each dedicated to particular bass colors and articulations. I have variously performed them in sets of three, five, or seven according to the program at hand. I find them to be a motivator for precise thinking and musical rhetoric."

While Beckett's pieces can be analyzed in terms of phrase length and language, Guy has further parameters at his disposal: speed, volume, and the choice of whether to attack the strings with bow, fingers or other implements. These he combines to realize five concise contrasting exhibitions of dazzling technique which deliver a visceral impact. Close recording at a concert in Vilnius the Lithuanian capital, in 2011, allows full appreciation of the nuances which Guy achieves both with and without his volume pedal.

Although "Fizzle I" largely comprises swooping arco glissandi in perpetual motion, it incorporates a brief lyrically keening interlude, which gives it the flavor of a miniature three part suite. While maintaining similar momentum, in "Fizzle II" Guy bounces either a stick or his bow off the strings to create a stream of tiny koto-like tics, interspersed with silence before closing by hitting the strings and letting the harmonics resound.

"Fizzle III" features strummed tremolos with ringing outliers, while "Fizzle IV" begins with deep resonant slurs before flurries of dense pizzicato sweep between both ends of the fingerboard. "Fizzle V" passes in a litany of abrasive approaches, at times violent and scratchy, but when Guy introduces a second voice with his bow more mysterious and austere.

Presenting the music in such bite size chunks encourages intense concentration without the risk of it ever becoming a daunting exercise. It's time well spent.
Track Listing: Fizzle I; Fizzle II; Fizzle III; Fizzle IV; Fizzle V.