Barry Guy

Double Bass, Composer, Musical Director
(United Kingdom)

Barry Guy is an innovative bass player and composer whose creative diversity in the fields of jazz improvisation, chamber and orchestral performance and solo recitals is the outcome both of an unusually varied training and a zest for experimentation, underpinned by a dedication to the double bass and the ideal of musical communication.

He is founder and Artistic Director of the London Jazz Composers Orchestra and the BGNO (Barry Guy New Orchestra) for which he has written several extended works. In 2014 he founded the “Blue Shroud Band” to perform his composition “The Blue Shroud” based on Picasso’s painting “Guernica” with texts by the Irish poet Kerry Hardie.

His concert works for chamber orchestras, chamber groups and soloists have been widely performed and his skilful and inventive writing has resulted in an exceptional series of compositions.

Barry Guy continues to give solo recitals throughout Europe as well as continuing associations with colleagues involved in improvised, baroque and contemporary music.

In 2016 Barry Guy was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Middlesex , London and also appointed Visiting Professor to the Rhythmic Conservatory in Copenhagen.

His current regular ensembles are the Homburger/Guy duo, the Parker/Guy/Lytton trio, TARFALA (with Mats Gustafsson and Raymond Strid), two new trios : BEYOND with Jürg Wickihalder (sax) and Lucas Niggli, (perc.) and “FREE RADICALS” with Peter Evans (tpt) and Agusti Fernandez (piano) as well as various piano trios: AURORA (with Agusti Fernandez and Ramon Lopez) HEXEN (with Paul Plimley and Lucas Niggli) and the longstanding trio with Marilyn Crispell and Paul Lytton.

“Folio” his work for strings, baroque violin, violin and improvising bass was released on ECM, “Time Passing…” with the Camerata Zürich and the vocal soloists Anja Pöche, Savina Yannatou and Matthew Brook on the Maya Recordings Label.

In 2019 he completed a commission for the KRONOS String Quartet as part of their series “50 for the Future”.

His solo works for violin, played by Maya Homburger, can be heard, framed by the Sonatas and Partitas by J.S. Bach, on three solo violin CDs released on the Maya Recordings Label.