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Massive discount on a large selection of items from the God Records catalogue. 🔥

Barry Guy

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

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

Member of: Iskra 1903
Barry Guy — Plays
"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 Botte…
Kouartéto
"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 importa…
Sidereus Nuncius – The Starry Messenger
*2025 stock* "It was at Ramón’s suggestion that we record as a duo in the downtime of another studio session, and perhaps it was his constellation of drums and cymbals that prompted the thought of a metaphorical planetary system. So Sidereus Nuncius …
So It Goes...
*2025 stock* "Barry Guy and I first met and played together in a version of the Spontaneous Music Ensemble in the days of the legendary Little Theatre Club. The late John Stevens, visionary prophet of the coming music was the key figure at the centre…
Schweben – Ay, But Can Ye?
*2025 stock* Important for this composition commissioned by the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra from Barry Guy, is the unity of composed and improvised passages, the concern for the capabilities and strengths of individual players, the way in which sma…
Some Other Place
*2025 stock* "“We are the place in which we dwell.” In a universe such as improvised music where, particularly in an ensemble, chance plays some kind of role, Agustí Fernández and Barry Guy did not by chance name this opus Some Other Place, paradoxic…
Aurora
*2025 stock* "In this provocative journey towards lost innocence, the pianist imposes restraint in the use of instrument not only upon himself, but also asks his colleagues Barry Guy and Ramón López, to simplify their interventions in a similar way. …
Zafiro
*2025 stock* One live improvisation of over an hour that zips by with the velocity of a three-minute single, Zafiro confirms that one of improvising music’s most enduring partnerships – 25 years and counting – is still a potent and electrifying force…
At Sotto Il Mare, First Visit
"No music making can be entirely non-idiomatic. Removing the metaphor, the claim is that it is characterless, without personality. But despite his best intentions, perhaps, one can hear a range of influences in Bailey’s own work – even if jazz isn't …
In The Light Of The Current Myth
"The time in Porto when Barry Guy and The Blue Shroud Band recorded an album all this here would also be a time when a group of outstanding artists and warm friends also had the opportunity to spend time making music together outside the big band for…
Six Hands Open As One
In 2019, a year before the onset of the pandemic and three years before the full-scale war in Ukraine broke out, we released Illuminated Silence. This was the first album of a new trio consisting of the young Japanese-born, Irish-based pianist and co…
Concert in Vilnius
*2023 stock* This concert was recorded during the Vilnius Jazz Festival, 15th October, 2017 at Russian Drama Theater, Vilnius, Lithuania. Line-up consists of Evan Parker - soprano and tenor saxophones, Barry Guy - bass, Paul Lytton - drums and percus…
Irvin's Comet
300 copies. NoBusiness presents Irvin's Comet, a new set of solo bass recordings by Barry Guy, recorded 29th October, 2019 during Improdimensija (Improdimension) concert series dedicated to improvised music, located at MAMAstudios, Vilnius, Lithuania…
The Swiftest Traveler
**CD version** An exciting new international trio initiated by Scandinavian saxophonist Torben Snekkestad, accompanied by two esteemed international players in the field of improvised music – the Spanish pianist Agusti Fernández and the British doubl…
Luminous
Two giants of improvised music Barry Guy and Gerry Hemingway joining pianist/composer Simon Nabatov, for a concert recorded live in Loft, Cologne, Germany on 30-31st October. Simon Nabatov - piano, Barry Guy - double bass Gerry Hemingway - drums, mar…
Louisiana Variations
"Torben Snekkestad and Barry Guy first worked together on 2015’s impressive Slip, Slide and Collide - that recording, with its labyrinthine improvisations and near-feverish eruptions, proved the duo to be fiercely attuned to one another. Now, on Loui…
Tensegrity
"Here the 14 members of British bassist Barry Guy’s Blue Shroud Band, gathered in Krakow to perform the bassist’s orchestral Blue Shroud, were recorded in Small Formations. The set features 26 tracks where band members from 10 countries demonstrate t…
Live At Maya Recordings Festival
Bomb! 500 copies. After twenty one recordings there may not be too much more to say about the superlative English threesome of saxophonist Evan Parker, bassist Barry Guy and drummer Paul Lytton. Some 30 years on since their debut Tracks (Incus, 1983)…
Five Fizzles For Samuel Beckett
"Is there a better all-around bassist with a bow than Barry Guy? That query may scream sycophantic hyperbole, but in taking stock of the British improviser's discography it's an interrogative that can't help but manifest repeatedly. On Guy's end t…
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