Jazz /
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 of things who brought us together. “So it goes“ – John often used this figure of speech.
I was reminded of this when I was looking through Samuel Beckett’s Collected Letters, hoping to glean some titles, knowing that Barry would be happy with a Beck…
Syllogistic Moments
*2025 stock* "Peter Evans and I have occasionally met in larger ensembles for special projects. This particular concert in Uster (Switzerland) within the PAM festival on 18. November 2016, allowed us to delve into the minutiae of duo performance where intense listening and decoding of intentions kept our minds and bodies in high alert. This occasion had us playing somewhat athletically, pushing and pulling ideas around, and to be honest, we both felt exhausted after the concert but also exhilara…
Slip Slide And Collide
*2025 stock* "This latest release on Maya Recordings documents a new duo collaboration of Barry Guy together with the exceptional Norwegian saxophonist Torben Snekkestad. At convergent boundaries, tectonic plates collide with each other, sometimes slowly, other times giving way suddenly with huge energy being expended. The various plates that encompass this planet either get subducted by being bent and pulled under the crust, or they collide and fold the rock at the boundary creating mountains. …
A Moment's Liberty
*2025 stock* Free jazz trio made up of leading improvisers pianist Agusti Fernandez, bassist Barry Guy and drummer/percussionist Ramon Lopez, recorded live in Cologne in 2013. Agusti Fernandez gives some insight into the music, “I believe that the essential thing for us is our shared desire to create an extraordinary, unexpected and unusual moment through music. A moment that cannot, perhaps, be described in words, but which can be perceived perfectly, as one of those fantastic occasions when mu…
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 small groups are part of the larger structures. Based on “Ay, but can ye?” a Russian poem translated into Scots by Edwin Morgan and using images of Wassily Kandinsky, this mostly graphically notated score is a musical adventure for the players as well a…
The Penelope Album Live
This album captures the debut performance of Billy's 12-piece chamber-jazz ensemble Grande Família, recorded live at London’s Pizza Express Jazz Club. The concert, which sold out two months in advance and received a full standing ovation, features expanded arrangements of music from his critically acclaimed debut album 'Penelope'. The original studio album was created as a surprise for Billy’s mother Penny during her struggle with pancreatic cancer in summer 2023. Released in her memory in Janua…
Four Compositions (Wesleyan) 2013
*2025 stock* PMP is proud to release Anthony Braxton’s “Four Compositions (Wesleyan) 2013”, a limited deluxe 4-CD box set documenting the one-time meeting of an all-star trio featuring the legendary saxophonist and composer alongside Roland Dahinden (trombone), and Hildegard Kleeb (piano). This is the first album of the Czech label PMP.Art Lange describes the impetus for the session in the liner notes: The 4 CD set box Four Compositions (Wesleyan) 2013 is built on the latest evolutionary stage o…
Figure Of Speech
1993 release ** "The trio setting of tuba and non-traditional percussion and Eskelin's compositions leave an uncluttered canvas free of many of the standard traps of head-solo-head without disolving into the total formlessness of much "avant garde" jazz. The musicians (Ellery Eskelin - tenor, Joe Daley - tuba, and Arto Tuncboyaciyan - percussion) respond to the setting with some beautifully executed improvisations. At the center of the trio, Eskelin's thick tenor sound - a seemingly impossible …
Plays Ornette Coleman's Little Symphony And Eight Other Modern Jazz Classics
1994 release ** "Affinity consists of Joe Rosenberg on soprano, Rob Sudduth playing tenor, bassist Richard Saunders and drummer Bobby Lurie. They have a very inclusive approach in picking out "nine modern jazz classics," so this inventive CD ranges in repertoire from Lee Morgan and Thelonious Monk to Ornette Coleman and Anthony Braxton (two compositions, including his infamous march). Affinity's playful interplay is a bit reminiscent of Steve Lacy's early recordings, and the versatile solos fit…
Dante No Longer Repents
1997 release ** "The Vinny Golia quintet on this CD is comprised of Golia on every woodwind known to man although he seems to prefer the extremes of range (e.g., piccolo, sopranino and contrabass saxes) alone with Tad Weed on the piano, Rob Blakeslee on trumpet, flugelhorn and cornet, Michael Bisio on the contrabass and Billy Mintz on the drum set. The music is in a style I have heard called freebop although I am not sure how common a usage that is. Freebop usually has a harmonic structure that…
No Secrets
1988 release ** "Featuring Julian Priester and Gary Peacock."
Julian Priester - tromboneJay Clayton - voiceJerry Granelli - percussionGary Peacock - bass
Tecniche Arcaiche (Live At Angelica)
2025 stock ** "The beauty of this music lies precisely in the capability of transmitting echoes of the pianistic music research happened in the last 50 years, filtered by Nicola Guazzaloca's personal and unmistakeable gaze.Prepared piano, improvisation, but also lyricism and the delicacy of the touch are the ingredients of his musical landscape. The ability of reinventing and being at ease with the "piano solo", aim and test for every pianist appears to us as one of the most precious elements of…
Attikos
*2025 stock* "A “meeting of spirits” between Greek singer Savina Yannatou and legendary free jazz bassist Barry Guy recorded live in Amsterdam, May 2010, where they performed at the famous Bimhuis Club. The music consists of free improvisations and a composition by Barry Guy, alongside two traditional songs arranged by Savina Yannatou and Barry Guy.The architects Ilya and Emilia Kabakov imagined a vertical opera space of several floors to be built within a cooling tower at the Zollverein Collier…
Morning Glory
*2025 stock* New recording from the free jazz trio of Agustí Fernández (piano), Barry Guy (bass) and Ramón López (drums and percussion) to follow their much acclaimed 'Aurora' album. The album includes a second ‘bonus’ disc of music recorded live in New York. "... Morning Glory rises as a monument dedicated to all music; music that has come and gone, music in the making, and music yet to come. Any genre, any emotion, any referent finds expression in this work, where introspection (“An Anonymous …
Fox Fire
*2025 stock* "There was a sense of excitement as the trio opened their first set in Birmingham of a mostly north England tour. Adjectives such as spiritual, energized, even devotional all come to mind. The meeting with Ken Vandermark in a classic trio formation of Saxophone (doubling clarinet), bass and percussion was suggested by Mark Sanders reacting to a tour proposal by the indefatigable organizer of Jazz events in the U. K. Tony Dudley-Evans. The music was like an initiation, a very special…
Tarfala
*2025 stock* "Listening to the tapes of this live concert from Culturen Västerås, persuaded me that certain attributes of the playing of Mats Gustafsson and Raymond Strid are indeed bound with “Terroir”. There is probably a useful Swedish word describing this, but the French word nevertheless seems appropriate in describing a sense of place, something earthy and powerful. My thoughts moved to volcanoes and in particular glaciers, which of course abound in Sweden. The explosive power of the volca…
Topos
*2025 stock* When Evan Parker, Barry Guy and percussionist Paul Lytton renewed their association at l’Auditori in Barcelona in March 2006, they chose to call the resulting CD ZAFIRO, or “Sapphire”. The following day, the trio was joined by Catalan pianist Agustí Fernández at the same venue to record the Topos album. The chemistry changes to an almost microscopic world of shifting colours and densities prompted by Fernández’s mercurial articulations of the piano keys and the strings inside the in…
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. Who would have thought it of these three indomitable, red-hot hyper-virtuosos? However, this three-way understanding goes back a long way, for they have been generating high-voltage spontaneous combustion together in different formats for years, and …
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. Refining their interaction every time they play together – saxophonist Evan Parker, bassist Barry Guy and percussionist Paul Lytton don’t lack for other gigs, but express instinctive rapport here. Veteran British improvisers, the three use a variet…
Play Mary Lou Williams
It's very rare that Discus Music commissions the actual musical content of a new release from the artists. In this case Martin Archer enjoyed a live gig by the duo so much, which had included one Mary Lou piece, that he suggested to Adam and Johnny after the gig they put together an entire programme of her music for this CD/DL. MLW is, after all, one of Martin's favourite artists.
Adam and Johnny both understand and demonstrate in their playing that new music does not appear out of nowhere. Any …