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 and the BGNO (Barry Guy New Orchestra) for which he has written several extended works. In 2014 he founded the “Blue Shroud Band” to perform his composition “The Blue Shroud” based on Picasso’s painting “Guernica” with texts by the Irish poet Kerry Hardie. His concert works for chamber orchestras, chamber groups and soloists have been widely performed and his skillful and inventive writing has resulted in an exceptional series of compositions. In 2016 Barry Guy was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Middlesex , London and also appointed Honorary Professor to the Rhythmic Conservatory in Copenhagen. In 2019 he completed a commission for the KRONOS String Quartet as part of their series “50 for the Future”.

Barry Guy continues to give solo recitals throughout Europe as well as continuing associations with colleagues involved in improvised, baroque and contemporary music. His main ensembles are the Homburger/Guy duo, the Trio with Torben Snekkestad and Agusti Fernandez, “Acanthis” Trio with Lucas Niggli and Maya Homburger, the Duo with Jordina Milla, the Parker/Guy/Lytton trio, Free Radicals with Agustí Fernández and Peter Evans, the trio with Agusti Fernandez and Zlatko Kaucic, the trio with Angelica Sanchez and Ramon Lopez and the longstanding trio with Marilyn Crispell and Paul Lytton.