NEW RELEASES 2010

Soon to be released:

MCD 1001  MORNING GLORY

Agustí Fernández: piano
Barry Guy: double bass
Ramón López: drums and percussion

Included with this new Trio CD is a FREE CD:
LIVE in NEW YORK

The idea to include a free CD with this recording came to me
whilst  listening to the New York concert in May 2009.

The atmosphere in the packed New York Club “The Jazz Standard” was highly charged  - everything came together:  a great sound thanks to the magic of Ferran Conangla, a specific thrill to be there in New York with its usual buzz and historical implication for any Jazz musician and of course the fact that this was a Catalan week where a variety of their best artists and even a wonderful chef with great food were represented.

The compositions on this Free CD (most of which are found on the trio’s first CD AURORA) had already developed over a few years, but in New York , thanks also to a totally concentrated audience, the group reached yet another level of extra exuberance, highest energy and a multitude of new colours but also an added degree of lyricism and intimacy.

The inclusion of this Bonus CD together with their new recording is also a THANK YOU to all the fans of the music who have bought the first CD and who will no doubt be thrilled to hear the LIVE version of the compositions they have come to love.

Added to the AURORA CD pieces is No Ni Nó which was dedicated to Maria Lladó on the night of the performance, and I am particularly pleased about the inclusion of Rounds by Marilyn Crispell who is one of our closest and much admired musician friends.

Maya Homburger

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MCD 1002  ATTIKOS

Savina Yannatou: voice
Barry Guy: bass

ATTIKOS   (CD liner notes by Barry Guy)

The architects  Ily and Emilia Kabakow imagined a vertical opera space of several floors to be built within a cooling tower at the Zollverein Colliery in Essen as part of their “Palace of Projects” scheme.

On each floor different music is played, and the audience ascends a musical and visual spiral of experience until reaching a top attic space where the “show” ends and the audience descends to another spiral to the exit.

During the ascending sequence, the audience experiences different tensions according to the colouration of the ceilings which lighten as the observer/ listener continues upwards. A rather special experience terminating in a blue sky with white clouds before the attic. There is of course music on each floor.

Whilst not wishing to inflate this duo music for voice and bass to operatic proportions, it occurred to me that there is in many ways a “spiral of experience” with this music offering a kind of narrative as the concert progresses.

Each piece has its own expression but sequenced in the sense that the progression of the music is closely linked with the previous interactions  -  an unfolding within the Bimhuis theatre space, where the concert & recording took place.  A container for the narrative.

The principal improvisations (first to fourth Sky) are at times  followed by loosely arranged  material relating to traditional songs  ( Sumiglia from Corsica and Nani Nani , a Jewish/Spanish melody) and one from my pen (The Ancients).

Questions may be asked why this analogy between an architectural space and a concert performance should interest anyone. Perhaps it is a way to describe a process, to pass on an experience that Savina and I went through in the creation of this music  - a process that seemed to incrementally elevate us upwards in terms of our communication.

A skywards spiral of invention, but above all simply a chance to sing and play music together and it seems appropriate that the final encore track “Attikos” not only refers to the spiral’s apogee but also to the form of Greek used by the ancient Athenians.

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MCD 1003  J.S. Bach “Musical Offering”

Camerata Kilkenny with Wilbert Hazelzet – baroque flute
Maya Homburger – baroque violin
Marja Gaynor – baroque violin and viola
Sarah McMahon – baroque cello
Malcolm Proud  - harpsichord

Recorded  26. and 27. April 2010 in  Sint-Pieterskerk, Leut Maasmechelen, Belgium by Stephan Schellmann (Tritonus Musikproduktion Gmbh, Stuttgart)

From a Review in the Irish Times:

……Performances of this extra-special work can be sometimes illuminated, sometimes stultified, by an atmosphere of overpowering reverence. Not so this one, in which the music’s artifices were subsumed in a world of rhetoric, decoration and dance……


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To be recorded in December 2010 :

the third and final CD in the Bach/Guy solo violin series with Maya Homburger, baroque violin.
On this recording you will find Bach’s Solo Sonata in C major BWV 1005 , followed by Barry Guy’s composition for solo violin “Lysandra” and the famous Partita in E major BWV 1006

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Still.....in the making  is a limited edition of 112 LPs with the long out of print recording by Barry Guy Statements V-XI (originally Incus 22). Each sleeve will have an original art work applied by artists like Alan Davie, Albert Irvin, Paul Mosse, Fred Hellier, Barry Guy, Hans Husel, Jan Erik Willgohs and Caroline Forbes.

We will soon prepare a file with all the various art works. People can then choose their favourite sleeve cover, and we will produce and sell them on a one-off and first come first choice basis.