Guy Barker
Guy Barker
British trumpet maestro Guy Barker was born in Chiswick, West London. He took up the trumpet at the tender age of 12 and played in his school brass band before joining Bill Ashton's National Youth Jazz Orchestra at 13. Among his contemporaries in the band at this period were several young turks of future renown including Chris Hunter, Jamie Talbot and Dick Pearce. Guy worked with NYJO until he was 21, but there was plenty of other musical activity to go with it. At the age of 17, he sat in with Clark Terry and took a few lessons with the master brassman. He also played with Dizzy Gillespie and became a friend of the bebop giant.
In 1975 Guy began a performer's course at the Royal College of Music, although he would decide to leave the College before completing his credentials: there were already too many offers of work to keep him there. At the age of 21, he went to New York and stayed there for six weeks, meeting and playing with many of the young musicians on the scene and actually forming a band, which would later tour the UK. Studio work and engagements for the BBC and with bandleaders such as John Dankworth kept him very busy into the early 1980s.
In 1986 Guy Barker was nominated for an All Music Award and played two concerts with the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican as trumpet soloist. Other engagements during 1986-87 incuded recording in Norway with Per Husby, Dusko Goykovich and John Surman and a record date with the Paris Reunion Band alongside Joe Henderson and Nat Adderly. In 1988 he first worked with Ornette Coleman and took part in Ornette's memorable series of European concerts for the classic 'Skies of America' composition.
He performed in the orchestra supporting Frank Sinatra on three of the great singer's tours and he has also accompanied a number of other major voices - Mel Torme, Liza Minnelli and Cleo Laine among others.
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