#Barry Guy Blue Shroud Band

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Co w jazzie piszczy [sezon 1 odcinek 19]

premierowa emisja 6 września 2023 – 18:00 Graliśmy: Sanem Kalfa “Quail” z albumu “REFLEX: Miraculous Layers” – Bimhuis Records Nina Simone “Mississippi Goddam” z albumu “You’ve Got To Learn” – Verve Records John Coltrane with Eric Dolphy “Impressions” z albumu “Evenings At The Village Gate” – Impulse! Records Slowly Rolling Camera “River View” z albumu “Flow” – Edition Records Aki Rissanen…

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HDO 265. Barry Guy: ¡feliz 70 cumpleaños! [Podcast]

El 22 de abril de 2017 el contrabajista y compositor Barry Guy cumple 70 años. En HDO celebramos su aniversario dedicándole la entrega 265. A lo largo de algo más de una hora escuchamos música de parte de sus grabaciones en el sello Intakt en distintos formatos: The Blue Shroud (The Blue Shroud Band), Studio / Live. Birds And Blades (Evan Parker – Barry Guy), Harmos (London Jazz Composers…

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Tyshawn Sorey and the Top 101 List: Part Two

Like Barry Guy’s larger groups (the London Jazz Composers Orchestra, the Barry Guy New Orchestra and The Blue Shroud), Tyshawn Sorey’s (I must stop confusing him with Tyson Fury!!) musicians on Pillars are broken down into smaller configurations across the expanse of the recordings (a methodology that can perhaps be methodologically  backdated to Derek Bailey’s Company, at least in the realm of free music?)  Listeners are encouraged to listen in parts: “small subgroups over relatively short distinguished sections”. The symphonic pretentions are obvious, everything held together under the overarching concept (which makes it somehow not ‘free’?). The London Jazz Composers 1993 ‘small-within-the great’ work Portraits is just one example of this modus.

Derek Bailey’s name will always come up when one is debating categorisation. He is in good ‘company’, as such greats as Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus and Eric Dolphy, to name only a few, regularly questioned whether ‘jazz’, with its dubious and rather unsavoury backstory in the brothels and stews of early 20th century New Orleans, was an appropriate name for black America’s moist/most creative music of that time period: but no-one has really come up with an alternative name that doesn’t sound lame. Listening to the Free Jazz Collective list of the 101 best jazz albums has merely reinforced my doubts as to what one should really call this music, without potentially misleading the listener. Most of us have an idea of what ‘jazz’ sounds like - perhaps a choice of Hard Bop or Swing? Louis Armstrong as the ultimate avatar? I’m aware that there are a lot of question marks in this blog, but John Corbett’s apercu should ultimately stand the test. Much of the 101 list features individuals/bands that seem to originate from other genres - hiphop, electronica, contemporary classical, drone, noise, minimalist, which is fine, as jazz has always been a welcoming home. But today’s maestros are usually from university-level training, and will inevitably have soaked up other speciality genres, jazz being but only one. And it shows.

There have been many attempts to pin down exactly what ‘proper jazz’ is, especially from the 1980′s ‘jazz revival’ onwards, i.e. it being the work of the pre-1970 period, with the Miles Davis Quintet(s) and the John Coltrane Quartet being institutionalised as the music’s non plus ultra. Definitely NOT the work of post-’electric Miles’ and his cursed spawn! The 101 list clearly proves that the definitional battle  is far from complete. There is some great music out there, but is it jazz? 100 years on, the word is still controversial, but resolute.

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Blue Shroud Band - Intensegrity: The Small Formations / Odes and Meditations for Cecil Taylor (Not Two, 2019) *****

Blue Shroud Band – Intensegrity: The Small Formations / Odes and Meditations for Cecil Taylor (Not Two, 2019) *****

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By Stephen GriffithSince 2010, large groups led by Barry Guy have had residencies at the Krakow Jazz Autumn Festival in November of every other year; 2010 & 12 with the 12 piece Barry Guy New Orchestra and 2014 & 16 with the 14 piece Blue Shroud Band. As part of their multiple days stay, they would spend the daylight hours in rehearsals for a culminating full group performance and the…

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HDO 529. Al habla con... Ramón López [Podcast]

HDO 529. Al habla con… Ramón López [Podcast]

Por Pachi Tapiz.

El baterista alicantino Ramón López, no es la primera vez que pasa por Tomajazz… ni será la última. En el pasado mes de noviembre de 2019 visitó Pamplona (Navarra), para impartir unos talleres multidisciplinares de improvisación. Aprovechando su visita, el artista charló con Pachi Tapiz para HDO. Esta conversación se centró en sus últimas grabaciones, y también en su tarea como…

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HDO 497. Odes And Meditations for Cecil Taylor AKA Barry Guy y la Blue Shroud Band en su punto de máximo esplendor [Podcast]

HDO 497. Odes And Meditations for Cecil Taylor AKA Barry Guy y la Blue Shroud Band en su punto de máximo esplendor [Podcast]

Por Pachi Tapiz.

El quíntuple CD Odes And Meditations for Cecil Taylor (Not Two Records), va a ser sin duda, una de las grabaciones más destacadas del año 2019… o al menos va a serlo para quien escribe estas líneas. Esta tremenda caja recoge la actuación de la fabulosa Blue Shroud Band en Cracovia en noviembre de 2016, y distintos encuentros durante los tres días anteriores entre los componentes…

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Implications of Covid-19 for Working Musicians?

Barry Guy kindly sent me a copy of the programme for the Krakow concerts, which took place on 6-8th of this month, in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of his London Jazz Composers Orchestra (LJCO). The reasons for this minor largesse is that I wrote the accompanying programme notes for the concerts, and it was great to see my words given the dignity of appearing in a professionally produced format. It’s also nice to get a heads-up in these times of viral insanity (’viral’ in both senses of the word). Over here, for example, my favourite three venues, Cafe Oto, The Vortex and I’Klecktik, are closed for the foreseeable future. Barry was very lucky to have planned his concerts for when he did, as, only two weeks on from them, such performances are now impossible to stage, what with the banning of both large and small-scale public gatherings of all kinds. Months, and even years in the planning, it would have been a heavy blow indeed to have seen all that work go up in smoke. In his letter to me that came with the programme, he expressed the difficulties that such bands as the LJCO, which is a large, international (seventeen musicians, from seven different countries) ensemble, will face in our Coronavirus-dominated near future. And well beyond.

The seventeen improvisers all managed to travel to and from Poland, which is a tremendous feat of organisation by Barry Guy and Maya Homburger, his wife and LJCO violinist, but they apparently have had to cancel “all sorts of other projects”. Given the amount of projects the couple always seem to be be involved with, I can only imagine the frustrations that the various lock-downs will cause this most hard-working and much-travelled duo. Unfortunately for working musicians, they do not fit into the ‘key worker’ category that Boris Johnson and his party have arbitrarily promulgated as being essential to the nation’s well being and functioning, so artists like Guy and Homburger could face considerable under-employment. Small gestures such as Bandcamp (which the Guys have joined up with, subsequent to their bust-up with Intakt Records) waiving their administrative charges will help, but surely projects like the eleven-piece Blue Shroud Band, which appeared over here in November last year, will have to go into probably-permanent abeyance? 

It seems t me that the couple’s best bet might be to record from home: ’working from home’ appears to be the choice that many ‘non-essential’ professionals have made, as a consequence of the virus’s risk factors that potentially affect the working environment. My wife tells me that, apparently, ‘Zoom’ is a visual internet platform that allows for high-quality live transmissions from a domestic setting. Maybe that sort of format might allow for solo and/or small group performance, and might meet the Guys exacting presentation standards?

We shall see. Whatever, the LJCO has seen nothing like Covid-19 in all of it’s fifty-year existence, which is sorely testing, even in it’s early stages, the resilience of musicians and audiences alike. The prospect of no live improv for no-one knows how long makes the prospect of self-isolation a tad easier perhaps, but it isn’t exactly an enticing notion, is it?. At least we have YouTube now, and it’s very hard to remember a time when we didn’t. 

Stay well if you can, everybody.

[trevorbarre]

AMM, Parker/Lytton, ‘Treatise’ - the spirit of 1969?

I’ve had a grand old time over the past two weeks, attending four gigs that crossed the free jazz/improv/composition divide(s), and which served to remind me of similar boundaries that were being explored and transgressed fifty years ago. It’s wonderful to think that many of the masters of that time are still active today, and that their explorations continue to challenge and fascinate those of us who are predisposed to listen to this stuff.

It all started with a performance at the rather stuffy Purcell Room (at London’s South Bank) by Barry Guy’s Blue Shroud Band, on the sixteenth of November, playing their eponymous composition that ‘celebrates’ the shrouding of Picasso’s famous painting, ‘Guernica’, by Colin Powell, when he announced the invasion of Iraq at a United Nations summit. A monumentally hypocritical and cynical act, according to Guy. As with so much of the bassist’s large-group output, ‘The Blue Shroud’ is a mixture of composed music and improvisations by the various members of his twelve-piece band. Opinions will always vary regarding the advisability of combining jazz improvisation and large-group written material (apart from The Duke, obviously), and my companions were less sold than I was about the performance, but it sparked a vigorous discussion, which is never a bad thing. I’m not a great fan of the sprechstimme of Savina Yattanou, but there was much else to enjoy from this pan-European collection of spirited improvisers, across a one-hour set. Guy’s music is complex, and I did benefit undoubtedly from previous exposure to the composition.

Three days later, on the nineteenth, we experienced a vital ‘free jazz/improv’ date at Cafe Oto, featuring the French bassist Joelle Leandre, with her trio accompanists of Alexander Hawkins (now surely established as one of our greatest jazz-based pianists?) and veteran drummer Roger Turner. This was a predictably intense and rewarding trio, but Leande remains a fairly obscure name in this country, even though she has been playing in the free improv world for decades. Turner and Hawkins gave her magnificent support, and, as ever in these sorts of gigs, it was very difficult for we listeners to guess how much was pre-composed and how much was ‘instant composition’. As if it really mattered?

A few days later, I was back at Oto, on the twenty-sixth, for an encounter with the ‘classic’ AMM trio of Eddie Prevost and Keith Rowe (it has actually been suggested, by Rowe himself, that any AMM formation MUST feature both musicians for it to be AMM) and pianist John Tilbury - a rare event nowadays, given the ongoing fractious relationship of Rowe and Prevost.  This ‘true’ AMM played a separate set, and then performed a version of Cornelius Cardew’s graphic composition ‘Treatise’(which AMM have previously essayed) with the French (again!) duo Formanex. This gig really deserves a review by itself, but it’s safe to say that this form of ‘improvised music’ (the only proper way to describe it?) remains sui generis, and almost beyond criticism or description. And they are still going after nearly fifty five unlikely years!  Only The Queen has offered more dedication to the cause over so many years!

And to finish this run, we had the monthly Evan Parker residency at The Vortex. It’s still amazing to think that this ‘national treasure’ is still performing for a few quid on the last Thursday of every month at this most modest of venues (which is another ‘national treasure’, without doubt). On the twenty eighth of November, Parker presented us with a dream quartet of Alexander Hawkins (once again), hardy perennial bassist John Edwards (incredibly flexible and always inspirational), and, mirabile dictu, the great Paul Lytton, who first began sparring with Parker fifty years ago, in the long-lasting ‘Parker/Lytton’ duo (1969-1976). What with having seen the ‘laminar’ AMM, in tandem with the ‘atomistic’ music of former Spontaneous Music Ensemble member Parker, it did feel that we were (somewhat fancifully, it must be admitted) thrust back into the late-sixties ‘golden age’ of the ‘improv wars’ of that time, back when the music was entirely new and entirely controversial. The same challenges that faced the 1969 crew still continue to face modern practitioners, however - our obsession with categories and labels continue to distance ourselves from properly experiencing the music itself (free improvisation/free jazz/ post-improv/ free bop/ post bop, etc, etc). 

Me? I’ve decided that ‘improvised music’ just about nails it. And am so glad that this dialogue between great improvisers continues across various London gigs (and beyond, I am reliably informed).

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HDO 180 Redux [Podcast]

HDO 180 Redux [Podcast]

Un breve adelanto de HDO 180 en el que escucharemos tres grabaciones recientes en las que la composición y la conducción son plataformas (o no) para la improvisación. Sonarán músicas de Wadada Leo Smith, Barry Guy Blue Shroud Band y Rova::Orkestrova homenajeando a Butch Morris. En breve, la versión completa disponible en Tomajazz.