Study - Witch Gong Game II/10 by Barry Guy And The NOW Orchestra, released on Maya Recordings in 1994.

British bassist Barry Guy has expressed a vast affinity for the visual 'language' of Scottish painter Alan Davie's works and here delivers a sonic echo of Davie's Witch Gong Game II/10...

..Guy succeeds in low lighting the front – sounds, making this painterly in the way a visual artist reverses primacies like foreground and background to upset the smugly balanced watchful gaze of viewers. Dig the reproduction of Guy's graphic, single page score and its quirky arrows, symbolic renderings of improv units within the orchestra, and embodiments of celestial maps from ages long ago.

— Andy Bartlett (Earshot Jazz, April 1995)

https://mayarecordings.bandcamp.com/album/study-witch-gong-game-ii-10

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v57HDjpCB2M&list=RDv57HDjpCB2M&start_radio=1

#BarryGuy #FreeJazz #BritJazz #AlanDavie #Jazz #Improvisation #Music

No Fear by John Stevens with Trevor Watts, Barry Guy, released on Spotlite Records in 1978.

No Fear Review by François Couture

...No Fear is one of drummer John Stevens' excellent jazzier sessions. Backed by his regular acolytes Trevor Watts and Barry Guy, the leader of the Spontaneous Music Ensemble revels in the hot free jazz licks he and the saxophonist came up with. His playing is superbly detailed by the recording, the interplay between his hi-hat cymbals and snare drum being particularly impressive in this jazz context. Watts pours a lot of soul into his horn, occasionally sounding like an alto version of Charles Gayle. Guy's bass work is brilliant but slightly undermined by the recording. No Fear may belong to Stevens' jazzier output (like the Spontaneous Music Ensemble's mid-'60s LP Challenge), but the music allows much freedom to the players...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5UJEVRcUMg&list=RDd5UJEVRcUMg&start_radio=1

#JohnStevens #TrevorWatts #BarryGuy
#FreeJazz #Music #BritJazz

Jazzfest Berlin 2025 – Line-Up veröffentlicht

https://jazzpages.de/jazzfest-berlin-2025-line-up-veroeffentlicht/

Study - Witch Gong Game II / 10
by Barry Guy and the Now Orchestra

"British bassist Barry Guy has expressed a vast affinity for the visual 'language' of Scottish painter Alan Davie's works and here delivers a sonic echo of Davie's Witch Gong Game II/10 alongside the shorter composition Study. With Vancouver's New Orchestra Workshop, Guy engages one of music's most intractably non-visual problems. That is, Guy's desire to image visuals in sound is de facto next to impossible. Compressing time so that a musical piece doesn't unfold along a timeline but rather leaps forth, as an arresting visual image can, is at least one of Guy's compositional strategies. Davie's paintings, in the words of liner notician Bill Smith, are "deconstructed to reveal the signs that are then used to generate a new language appropriate to the special needs of improvisers and composer alike..."

— Andy Bartlett (Earshot Jazz, April 1995)

https://mayarecordings.bandcamp.com/album/study-witch-gong-game-ii-10

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v57HDjpCB2M

#barryguy #alandavie