“… his virtuoso control at all dynamic levels just has to be heard to be believed…” International Record Review
“I wish more people would think about music the way Matthew Barley does” The Times (London)
"Stunning cello - words cannot do justice to the strength and effect of his playing" Capital Times (New Zealand)
"This was brilliant playing, fully in baroque style, announcing to all that here was a cellist to reckon with." Dominion Post (New Zealand)
“One of the most talented cellists I’ve ever heard” Leonard Bernstein
Matthew Barley is internationally known as cellist, improviser, arranger, music animateur, and Artistic Director of Between The Notes. His musical world is focused on projects that connect people in different ways, blurring the boundaries that never really existed between genres and people.
As a soloist and chamber musician he has performed in over 50 countries, including appearances with the BBC Scottish (Volkov) and Philharmonic, Frankfurt Radio Symphony (Gabel), Swedish Chamber (Dausgaard) Melbourne Symphony (Tortelier), New Zealand Symphony (Tan Dun), Hong Kong Sinfonietta, Netherland Radio Symphony (Stenz), Czech Philharmonic, Vienna Radio Symphony, Kremerata Baltica,
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and Royal Scottish National (Alsop). With Viktoria Mullova he recently premiered and toured At Swim-Two Birds, a double concerto by Pascal Dusapin, with the Nederlands Radio, RAI Torino, Seattle Symphony, London Philharmonic, Paris National and Leipzig Gewandhaus(Slobodeniouk). He has performed at festivals in Lucerne, Schleswig-Holstein, Bonn-Beethovenfest, Hong Kong, Lanaudiere, Abu Dhabi, Krakow, City of London and in recent seasons has performed at some of the world's great concert halls: London's Wigmore Hall, Royal Albert Hall, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Kumho Hall in Korea, Pablo Casals Hall in Tokyo, The Rudolfinium In Prague, and the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires. A key aspect of his recitals is mixing repertoire in unusual ways, for instance, pairing Bach
suites with jazz and improvisation. He is particularly interested in music with electronics, having commissioned works from many composers including Dai Fujikura, Nitin Sawhney, DJ Bee, John Metcalfe, Oded Ben-Tal and Jan Bang. He has given other premieres of pieces written for him by Pascal Dusapin, James MacMillan, Roxana Panufnik, Thomas Larcher, Detlev Glanert and John Woolrich. In 2005 he toured Brett Dean’s ballet score One of the Kind (for solo-on-stage-cello and electronics) with the Netherlands Dans Theatre; in 2010 with the Basel Ballet and in 2012 with Lyon Ballet.
Collaboration - whether chamber music or with different styles of music - is an enduring passion, and, amongst others, Matthew has worked with Matthias Goerne, The Labeque Sisters, Martin Frost, Avi Avital, Calefax, Vilde Frang, Nicolas Altstaedt, Kit Armstrong, Amjad Ali Khan, Julian Joseph, Django Bates, Ross Daly, Talvin Singh, Deep Purple’s Jon Lord, Sultan Khan and Kathryn Tickell.
In 1997 Matthew Barley founded Between The Notes, a performance and education group that has appeared at the Sydney Opera House, the Royal Opera House (with the Royal Ballet) and the International Symposium of Contemporary Music in Hong Kong. In 2005 the group took the lead role in a devised work, Invisible Lines, which culminated in a BBC1 live-television performance at the Royal Albert Hall for the Proms, alongside players from the BBC Symphony Orchestra. BTN also took centre stage for the 20th anniversary celebrations of the Köln Philharmonie as soloists with the Gürzenich Orchestra under Markus Stenz.
A major project called The Peasant Girl with his wife, Russian violinist Viktoria Mullova has seen over 40 performances worldwide. The programme features Matthew’s arrangements of gypsy and jazz as well as Bartok and Kodaly and has been recorded for CD and DVD on Onyx Classics. 2007 saw Matthew’s debut on television as the Music Director of BBC 2’s widely acclaimed ‘Classical Star’.
His first CD on Black Box, The Silver Swan was an enormous critical success, followed by Reminding, a disc of Soviet music. Constant Filter (music for cello and electronics by John Metcalfe) is Matthew’s second release for Signum Classics, following the five-star success of The Dance of the Three Legged Elephants with jazz pianist Julian Joseph.
In 2013 Matthew undertook an astonishing 100-event UK tour celebrating Benjamin Britten – the itinerary included venues as diverse as a Victorian swimming pool, an ancient yew forest, a lighthouse, a barn and the Wigmore Hall in London, as well as a host of educational projects in schools, a hospice, an old people’s home and a prison. The tour was accompanied by a release on Signum Classics, Around Britten, described by Sinfini as “a defining statement in modern cello playing”.
Future projects include Brazilian jazz, several Indian collaborations, tours to Australia and New Zealand, improvisation projects with Swedish Chamber Orchestra and the Kuopio Symphony, the release of Tavener’s The Protecting Veil with the Riga Sinfonietta, the premiere a new concerto written for him by Misha Mullov- Abbado with the BBC Concert Orchestra and a major Beethoven project for 2020 at multiple venues including London’s SouthBank and Germany’s Bad Kissingen Festival.
