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

Study - Witch Gong Game II / 10

by Barry Guy and the Now Orchestra

supported by

	/

Streaming + Download

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

Purchasable with gift card

€8 EUR or more
Full Digital Discography

41

releases

Get all 41 Maya Recordings releases available on Bandcamp and save 50%.

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of So It Goes..., Acanthis, J S BACH soprano arias & Swedish Folk Chorales, Syllogistic Moments, Sidereus Nuncius — The Starry Messenger, Time Passing …, Slip Slide and Collide, A Moment’s Liberty, and 33 more. , and , .

Purchasable with gift card

€172 EUR or more (50% OFF)

	1.	Study 16:22
	2.	Witch Gong Game II / 10 52:17

about

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 time line 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".

The musical tumult is aptly undulatory, with assertions of sound merging into such a mass that colour is an obviously nearby reference point, even though I couldn't name the colour Guy invoked, but I can feel it thoroughly. Oscillations between group statements, phrased as swirling masses of sound that trade contours as differing instruments supply their individual (and stretched) pitches to the maelstrom, and solos create a musical experience so massive as to be perhaps one of Guy's finest compositional expanses.

Of course, his work with the London Jazz Composer's Orchestra, the Evan Parker, Paul Lytton trio, and a myriad of other combos is all comparable in terms of greatness, vigour, and the incredible melding of free improvisation and composition in a very late 20th-century bag. But with NOW, Guy's prowess is engaged by a collective of Canadian musicians who haven't had the years of work with the bassist that their English counterparts have. Pianist Paul Plimley, soprano saxophonist Bruce Freeman, vocalist Kate Hammet-Vaughan, et al though, make distinctive contributions, whether pummelling the piano, soaring vocally into the stratosphere, or squiggling in a recess so distant that in highlighting the rear-sounds, 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)

credits

released February 1, 1994

Barry Guy: bass/director
Coat Cooke: tenor and baritone saxophones/flute
Ron Samworth: guitar
Kate Hammett-Vaughan: voice
Paul Plimley: piano
Bruce Freedman: soprano saxophone
Graham Ord: soprano and tenor saxophones/piccolo
Peggy Lee: cello
Clyde Reed: bass
Paul Blaney: bass
John Korsrud: trumpet
Ralph Eppel: trombone
Saul Berson: alto saxophone
Dylan van der Schyff: drums

license

about

Maya Recordings Oberstammheim, Switzerland

Barry Guy and Maya Homburger founded Maya Recordings in 1991 to take care of their desires to document the various projects that occupy their musical lives. So unusually
you will find Jazz and improvised musics alongside baroque masterpieces. ... more

mayarecordings.com

contact / help

Contact Maya Recordings

Streaming and
Download help

Redeem code

Report this album or account

If you like Study - Witch Gong Game II / 10, you may also like:

Rainbow Family
by George Lewis

supported by 6 fans who also own “Study - Witch Gong Game II / 10”

I am really enjoying this. Was brought to it by searching for some Derek Bailey. I am also on a George Lewis kick theses days. This album seems like an achievement. Combining computers and brilliant improvisers. And it is such good music. The whole process seems fascinating but becomes irrelevant. The music is that good.The computer sounds like Sun Ra. liclon
go to album
live @ Loft Köln
by IMPAKT meets Le Quan Ninh, Eve Risser & Evan Parker

supported by 5 fans who also own “Study - Witch Gong Game II / 10”

Loft is a fantastic place to go when staying in Köln. Check that out! Check out as well my music: mrrichardson.bandcamp.com Mr. Richardson
go to album
Sequel (For Lester Bowie)
by GEORGE LEWIS with Miya Masaoka, Kaffe Matthews, DJ Mutamassik, Jeff Parker et al.

supported by 5 fans who also own “Study - Witch Gong Game II / 10”
go to album
Moments Remixes
by Michael Vincent Waller

There’s a quiet beauty to this remix album of compositions by Michael Vincent Waller, with contributions from JLin, Prefuse 73, & more. Bandcamp New & Notable Apr 1, 2024
go to album
Thinking of Blue Almonds Part One
by Lou Lyne & the Blue Almond Project

Somber, beautiful string meditations abound on the debut album by Oxford cellist and composer Lou Lyne and her ensemble. Bandcamp New & Notable Mar 30, 2024
go to album
Ki moun ou ye
by Nathalie Joachim

Vocalist, flutist, and composer blends traditional instrumentation with jazz-inflected neoclassical arrangements. Bandcamp New & Notable Feb 22, 2024
go to album
Obstacle Illusion
by Thollem

supported by 5 fans who also own “Study - Witch Gong Game II / 10”
go to album