How do you listen to music most often?
I have a large CD and vinyl collection at home, which is where I listen mostly. These days I spend most of my time at home composing and arranging. During my touring days, I used Walkmans and then iPods. In fact, I’ve used every possible way to listen to music. It’s what I need so much. However, there is still nothing like hearing music live.
What was the first record you bought?
I remember the first three LPs I bought with my own pocket money when I was very young, but not which one was first. They were: Stokowski conducting Holst’s The Planets, Louis Armstrong in the 1930s and 40s, and the Beatles’s A Hard Day’s Night.
What was the last music you bought?
I bought two albums a few days ago: the Berlin Philharmon performing Witold Lutosławski’s Symphony No 3 and Kurt Elling’s Passion World. Kurt is an amazing jazz vocalist whose musicality always inspires me, and this album features not only his great voice but also some amazing arrangements.
What’s your musical guilty pleasure?
Realising that I have quite a few CDs, LPs and downloads in my collection that I haven’t really listened to, but I’ll still buy more.
If you had six months free to learn a new instrument, what would you choose?
Six months is no time at all, especially when it comes to dealing with all the obstacles a musical instrument can throw at you. However, if I did have that amount of time completely free I’d just spend it trying to improve what I do now, and try to become a better composer. And I’d definitely work on my piano playing. It’s pretty bad.
Is applauding between movements acceptable?
I know it can be very inappropriate in some situations, but if a performance can move you to react in that way, then go ahead and applaud. In the world of jazz, if a musician’s improvised solo is exhilarating and creatively inspiring enough, an audience will applaud – sometimes several times during one piece. As long as the music moves you. That’s the most important thing.
What has been your most memorable live music experience as an audience member?
There are too many great memories of so many amazing and inspiring moments, but three were pretty life-changing. In fact, the moments that as a 13/14 year old made me realise that music would have to be my life were the following concerts. My dad took me to see two of them at the Hammersmith Odeon, in London : the first was the Count Basie Orchestra with vocalist Joe Williams, and the second was called The Giants of Jazz, and included Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonius Monk and Art Blakey. I’d never heard anything like that in my life. I was in the front row of the balcony, and I was mesmerised from start to finish. Then only a short time later, a friend of mine at school suggested we go to a Prom. We queued up all day at the Royal Albert Hall and got a place right at the front. That was the first time I heard Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. It was the most incredible experience. I won’t ever forget that moment.
We’re giving you a time machine: what period, or moment in musical history, would you travel back (or forward) to, and why?
It would have to be the 50s, so I could hear the great trumpet player Clifford Brown and so many of the amazing jazz musicians performing at that time. Also I’d hopefully get over to Paris and maybe hear one of the final pieces by Arthur Honneger premiered. I’ve always loved his music.
Do you have a favourite musical?
I am not a huge fan. However, the songs and orchestrations in the original versions of West Side Story and Guys and Dolls are pretty masterful.
Which conductor or performer of yesteryear do you most wish you could have worked with?
That would have to be Leonard Bernstein. He was a giant of a musician who seemed to effortlessly move across many different genres and always be in complete control of whichever idiom he found himself.
Which nonclassical musician would you love to work with?
I spend so much of my time working with nonclassical musicians as well as musicians who find themselves easily moving from one genre to the next that I find it impossible to pick out one. But if I could change the question around to classical players, I really admire great musicians like Lang Lang, Alison Balsom, Håkan Hardenberger, Esa-Pekka Salonen and also the great composer Mark-Anthony Turnage.
It’s late, you’ve had a few beers, you’re in a Karaoke bar. What do you choose to sing?
I’d have a damn good go at Billy Strayhorn’s Lush Life. But I’d probably give up by the third bar. It would be better for everyone.
• Guy Barker’s The Lanterne of Light will premiere at the BBC Proms on 6 September at the Royal Albert Hall, London. It will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3.
