Barry Guy – London Jazz Composers Orchestra and Trio at Jazzfest Berlin 2025

This year’s JazzFest Berlin has two major concerts featuring London-born bass legend Barry Guy:

The first is a performance which will be the centrepiece of the Saturday night triple bill on the main stage of the Haus der Berliner Festspiele, the festival’s home. On 1 November, Barry Guy will direct the London Jazz Composers Orchestra in a performance of “Double Trouble 3”.

His second appearance is on the closing Sunday night, when he, together with pianist Angelica Sanchez and drummer Ramón López, will play a trio set at Berlin’s leading jazz club A-Trane.

DOUBLE TROUBLE III

“Double Trouble” is a major work, a kind of double piano concerto with a large ensemble of musicians who read and improvise, which has been evolving ever since its first iteration in 1989, when it was originally written for pianists Howard Riley and Alexander von Schlippenbach, and was conceived to be performed by the LCJO and the Global Unity Orchestra combined.

Other pianists have been involved in the featured roles, and Guy has proceeded to “refine…elongate…fine tune… get the piece to flow… re-form and adjust the overall architecture” – very much in the manner of Pierre Boulez – as a function of what new pianists will bring to the work, notably Marilyn Crispell and Angelica Sanchez, who will be featured performing the work in Berlin.

The substantial work, which will be performed by the eighteen musicians listed below, is an integrated single piece: “I see it as one complete gesture,” explains Guy. “It is a journey, which exposes different ensembles within the orchestra, but what they play is always related to what the pianos are going to be doing. I try to hand out the creative side to involve all of the players equally.”

This year’s performance also brings back history and heritage. It is not the first time that the London Jazz Composers Orchestra has performed on 1 November at Jazzfest Berlin: it also did so more than half a century ago, in 1972. (LINK TO 1972 Orchestra) – and the LCJO was also in Berlin in 1998.

A fascinating aspect of this Berlin performance will be to see the combining of generations of players with similar interests. The three trumpets are all from the UK, but with a huge age range: Henry Lowther, Percy Pursglove and Charlotte Keeffe.

There are major moments in the work which are reminders that key players are no longer with us, and yet there is a legacy to build on: were originally designed to bring the trombone playing of Paul Rutherford to the fore, such as a section known as the “Spanish march”, which emerges twice, and also the final coda section, and these will be taken by Andreas Tschopp.

There is complexity and “Double Trouble” needs musicians with extremely high proficiency as readers as well as strong improvising voices. Guy found particular pleasure in the fact that Swiss drummer/percussionist Lucas Niggli, a regular collaborator, and another stalwart of the Zurich-based Intakt label, has made it clear that he will be able to perform single-handedly a role which has required two percussionists in previous iterations of the piece.

When Guy talks about this work, the primacy of ideas about form and proportion in musical works keeps coming up as a theme. Such preoccupations are intrinsic to Guy’s way of working. His original job before becoming a full time musician was as a draughtsman at a London architectural practice specialising in restoration projects. His way of envisaging a composition as “a structure where everything is supported by everything else” is clearly still influenced by that important stage in his life.

THE TRIO

When Guy looks forward to the trio performance, very different points of reference enter the discussion. Rather than the structural, it is above all the interpersonal which matters.

The background here is that this trio with pianist Angelica Sanchez, and drummer Ramón López has had one previous encounter, at the Jazzdor Festival in Strasbourg in 2023. Guy takes up the story of how this meeting went: “We established that this trio works very well. It was the first time I played with Angelica and thus first time as a trio. It was a wonderful concert. You almost know from first iterations that something magical can happen.” Guy is also full of praise for Ramon Lopez: “He fits into the role of driving and supporting so well. When you experience this kind of listening, you know it is something you want to do again.”

Whether it is the complexity of the work which will be brought to life in the moment in “Double Trouble 3”, or the immediacy of interaction between musicians who admire and respect each other’s ways of listening in the trio, Jazzfest Berlin is set to shine a well-deserved spotlight on an important figure who continues to be an inspiring and driving force in European jazz.

LJCO line-up for DOUBLE TROUBLE III in Berlin, 1 November 2025

Barry Guy – bass, director (UK)
Marilyn Crispell – piano SOLO (USA)
Angelica Sanchez – piano SOLO (US)

Torben Snekkestad – tenor / soprano sax (NO)
Michael Niesemann – alto sax (DE)
Julius Gabriel – baritone sax (DE)
Simon Picard – tenor sax (U.K.)
Mette Rasmussen – alto sax (NO)

Henry Lowther – tpt (UK)
Percy Pursglove – tpt (UK)
Charlotte Keeffe – tpt. (UK)

Andreas Tschopp – trb (CH)
Shannon Barnett – trb (AUS)

Marleen Dahms – trb (DE)

Marc Unternährer – tuba (CH)

Philipp Wachsmann – violin (UK)
Christian Weber – double bass (CH)
Lucas Niggli – percussion (CH)

The LJCO wish to acknowledge invaluable support for the Berlin concert from both the Robert D. Bielecki foundation, New York, and Pro Helvetia, Zurich.