photo: Jim Four
The legendary London Jazz Composers Orchestra has been for over thirty years the pinnacle of improvised music. The band plays host to top European musicians both from the jazz scene and classical music world. Acclaimed in North America and Europe, the orchestra is a Who’s Who of virtuoso improvisers, investigating the relationship between composed and improvised music, contemporary classical and jazz. The compositions from leader Barry Guy provide a framework for the musician’s explosive solos and collective improvisations.
“LJCO is a band of soloists, and as such everybody’s playing for their life. There are no passengers. The LJCO in concert is as much about physical force of sound as it is about musical information – it’s a portrait of the future.”
Barry Guy
“…As a listener, one is pulled into a creative process, sharing in the invention, the becoming – the music is in constant state of development, one does not get an impression of anything completed, it is a continual birth of tones and timbres…”
22. 05. 2008, Schaffhausener Nachrichten, Alfred Wüger
photo: Francesca Pfeffer
Barry Guy and the London Jazz Composers Orchestra
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 for which he has written several extended works. 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 and the USA as well as performing with Evan Parker/Paul Lytton trio, Marilyn Crispell and Gerry Hemingway, Agusti Fernandez, Mats Gustafsson and Raymond Strid, his big band BGNO (Barry Guy New Orchestra) various chamber music formations etc.
photo: Francesca Pfeffer, Gutzeit-Musik
Conny Bauer
Conny Bauer (born 1943 in Halle an der Saale), is one of Europe’s most significant trombonists. Since the start of the 70’s he has been a founding member of numerous groups such as Exis, FEZ, Konrad Bauer Quartet, Bauer Sommer Kowald Trio, Doppelmoppel, Zentralquartett as well as the initiator of the big band Klangprojekt 86. Bauer gave his debut solo trombone concert in 1974. Today, over 35 years later he continues to explore and experiment with this instrument, continually developing new worlds of sound for himself and his audiences.
To date he has recorded six CD albums of his solo music. Bauer was awarded the City of Berlin’s Order of Merit in 1994 and won the SWR- Südwestrundfunk Jazz Prize ten years later. Concerts and guest slots have taken him around the world.
Conny Bauer has played as a member of the following orchestras and ensembles: Graham Collier Bigband and NDR- Bigband, European Jazzensemble, Joachim Kühn- Jubilee Band, Creativ Music Orchestra USA/ Canada, dem East Asia Orchestra in Japan and Globe Unity Orchestra.
In countless tours he has played together with renowned musicians such as Butch Morris, Micha Mengelberg, Antony Braxton, George Lewis, Louis Sclavis, Joachim Kühn, Ernst Reijseger, Irene Schweizer and Barre Phillips amongst others.
Superb improvisational instrumentalists
“The 17-strong orchestra has developed a very individual sound, a sort of orchestral identity similar to that of the legendary Ellington orchestras. Guy’s compositions often adhere to a romantic gist – they project a calmness that stands in stark contrast to the several solo statements given by the superb improvisational instrumentalists.”
Nick Liebmann, NEUE ZÜRCHER ZEITUNG, Zürich
CD Production
with Conny Bauer
„Theoria feat. Irène Schweizer, Piano”, 1991
„Study II, Stringer”, 2006
