Guy Barker is so busy that he apparently doesn’t have time to talk to the press, not even Downtown News. Now, that’s busy. The acclaimed jazz composer and trumpet virtuoso “” twice nominated for the coveted Mercury Music Prize and recipient of the 1994 and ’96 British Jazz Award for best trumpeter – is in the U.S. one minute and gone the next, vaporizing and re-emerging at will, not unlike the music that helped make his name a household word in his native London.
Take his “Amadeus Jazz Suite,” for example. It’s crafted around eight characters from three of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s operas, and plans for its April 29 American premiere at Lindbergh Field’s Jimsair hangar fit nicely into the yearlong celebration of the famed Austrian composer’s 250th birthday. The piece, which will world-premiere in Tijuana on April 28 and repeat at La Jolla’s Neurosciences Institute on April 30, reportedly bobs and weaves more often than Barker’s schedule. But the Mainly Mozart group, which commissioned the piece, cautions that audiences expecting warmed-over classical treatments are in for a disappointment.
“By jazzing up Mozart,” executive director Nancy Laturno Bojanic said, “it’s almost questioning the relevance of Mozart today, and we don’t do that. We feel that Mozart is extremely relevant. He was a brilliant composer, and his music continues to speak to people today. But we look for different ways to represent studies of Mozart, and that’s what this is “” an exploration of Mozart’s opera characters. It’s not derivations of Mozart’s work. It’s not a knock-off.”
Neither is the lineup Barker has behind him for the event. The featured soloists include Grammy-winning composer Roger Kellaway on piano; acclaimed Italian saxophonist Rosario Giuliani; and several musicians known areawide, including bassist Bob Magnusson, clarinetist Terry Harrington, saxophonist John Rekevics, Brad Steinwehe on trumpet, Scott Kyle on trombone and Jim Plank on drums and percussion.
“We’re extremely lucky,” Laturno Bojanic said, noting the litany of names and Barker’s exhaustive list of British and American accolades. “We sought Guy out to do this work we’ve commissioned. Guy is a very important force in jazz composing.”
Barker, 48, has taken his talent in decidedly un-classical directions since his encounter with the legendary Dizzy Gillespie while playing in a youth orchestra. He has five jazz albums, a major film soundtrack and the formation of a jazz quintet to his credit; he’s done sessions work and other support for Sting, Lena Horne, the British rock group WHAM! and the bands behind Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Jr. He’s toured from Europe to Hong Kong and is working on a suite devoted to Hollywood film noir of the 1940s and ’50s.
His relationship with Mainly Mozart wasn’t solidified overnight. Neither was Mainly Mozart the only party involved in forming it. Peter Thompson, a Hong Kong attorney and an opera buff, approached his friend Barker in the late ’90s with the idea of a Mozart-based jazz piece as a way to forge contacts with Mainly Mozart. One thing led to another, and in 1999, Barker came to town to perform a modest precursor to the suite, that one involving only two characters. Barker would revisit San Diego in 2001 with a national anthem performance at a Padres tilt and again in 2003 as part of the Mainly Mozart Seaside Jazz Series.
The latest entry looks at figures from “The Marriage of Figaro,” written in 1786, “Don Giovanni,” performed a year later, and “Cosi Fan Tutti,” from 1790. The operas are meticulous and deliberate in their attention to detail; the characters “” including the impulsive Don Alfonso, the brooding Despina and the stately Zerlina “” are highly distinct in their personalities, lending themselves to improvisational techniques that only jazz can convey. The genre, Laturno Bojanic noted, is founded in impulse and spontaneity “” the same traits that govern the creation of fictional characters.
More information on the “Amadeus Jazz Suite” performances is available at 619-239-0100 or online at www.mainlymozart.org.