Bend and bow

Like a keen inventor, British musician Matthew Barley used to 'bang on people's doors' to see if they would try out his wacky ideas. These days, it's the other way round. Dubbed 'the world's most adventurous cellist', the 45-year-old now counts Indian, Sufi, African and jazz musicians as well as international orchestras as collaborators. So when the Hong Kong Sinfonietta asked him to perform for a yoga class-cum-concert, Barley leapt at the chance. 'I practised yoga myself for many years and it's an absolutely wonderful practice. I find the music can really set the atmosphere for that beautifully and I think it's going to be a really interesting experiment,' he says. The cellist believes there are better ways to serve classical music to people than just having them sit in straight rows being quiet and still. 'When we listen to classical music at home on CDs, I doubt if we sit upright in a chair and keep completely still. We do all sorts of different things while listening to music,' he says. So the idea behind Relaxin' After Work: Shake It Off with Matthew Barley, to be held at ArtisTree in Taikoo Place next Monday and Tuesday, is to give the audience a chance to move and relax to the music. 'I've obviously got a programme prepared but I'll also be flexible in that I will follow the atmosphere of the room,' says Barley. This concert marks the third time the cellist has collaborated with the Sinfonietta. They will also be performing together at two other free concerts at the same venue later this month titled All Things Strings. There will be plenty of improvisation in both programmes. For the yoga sessions, which will be led by an instructor from Pure Yoga, Barley says he aims to create a meditative atmosphere, drawing on his experience working with Indian musicians. Also on the playlist will be music by contemporary classical musician John Metcalfe, whose work is influenced by minimalist composer Steve Reich. 'But this is not a concert of Indian and minimalist music: it is more you play with a sense of freedom ... I'll just play, and I will think in terms of the emotion of music, which will be something that is really designed to bring people back into their bodies after a day of work and prepare them for a really beautiful evening.' Barley's reputation for being adventurous probably comes from his diverse approach to music making and playing despite his classical training. He started playing the cello at the age of seven, attended Chetham's School of Music in Manchester and joined the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain before studying cello at the Guildhall School in London. From there he went to the Moscow Conservatoire for post-graduate study with Natalia Shakhovskaya, to whom Mstislav Rostropovich entrusted his own class when he moved to the West in 1974. Barley is active in both the classical and non-classical scenes, having performed with orchestras such as the BBC Philharmonic and London Sinfonietta as well as alongside British fusion music composer Talvin Singh and jazz pianist Julian Joseph. He even dabbled in reality TV and was the music director and presenter of BBC's Classical Star in 2007. Staying faithfully by his side all along has been his main instrument, a Cesare Gigli cello (circa 1790), and, for the past two years, an electric version of that. The two cellos enable him to open up more possibilities in his musical exploration and experimentation, he says. For the Relaxin' After Work concert, for instance, Barley - who recently performed in Austria, the Netherlands and England - will be switching between the acoustic and electric cellos. 'What the electric enables me to do is open up a huge new world of sound possibilities,' he says. 'I can sound like a cello in a cathedral with an extraordinary, beautiful rich vibrato ... I can play double stops where I am playing two notes and the computer can add two other notes so I can play very rich four-part harmony and make incredible sounds through that.' However, the interchanging is not easy. 'With an acoustic cello, you obviously create 100 per cent of the sound. With an electric cello, what's very hard is you have to play much more gently on it because the electric is creating a good portion of the sound for you. 'So it's a very different technique and that's hard to get used to, but it's worth it because of the sounds available,' he says. The All Things Strings concerts will pose another kind of challenge. Not only is the strings-only programme eclectic - from Tchaikovsky to Piazzolla to British pop duo Everything But the Girl - the 30-strong ensemble will also have to improvise with the cellist in between pieces. 'That is adventurous,' says Barley, who performed with the Sinfonietta in 2002 and 2004, 'but it's wonderful that they have accepted the challenge. I think 10 years ago this might have been impossible but times are changing and more and more players are happy to improvise these days. 'So rather than playing a piece for five minutes, stopping, turning around, taking a bow, the audience applauding, everyone shuffling around and coughing and then playing the next piece, at the end of the piece we'll go straight into a free improvisation ... which could go, obviously, in any direction ... we'll then direct that improvisation and the energy towards the beginning of the next piece.' Improvisation also plays a big part in a new project that teams him up with one of his closest collaborators - his wife, Russian violinist Viktoria Mullova. They have been on the road with a series of concerts loosely based around the idea of gypsy and jazz music. 'It's always exciting working with her because she comes from a very traditional soloist background so it's completely different from the world that I work in,' Barley says. 'And bringing that world and my world together with improvisation with jazz pianist Julian Joseph and two very talented percussionists ... we hope to bring it to Hong Kong some time.' A shoulder injury exacerbated by a skiing accident two years ago almost ended his career. Fortunately, he found a physiotherapist who 'put my shoulder back together'. The injury affected the way he plays but in a positive way, the cellist says. 'The sound has opened up now, I have more freedom when I play. But I paid a big price for it,' he says. 'I was off the stage for about eight months and went through some very difficult times when I thought I would never be able to play again. So it was a real rite of passage in many ways but ultimately it was a very positive outcome.' As a result of the injury Barley learnt from the physiotherapist that he was 'naturally and extremely bendy' and, therefore, yoga was not the ideal practice for him. The father of three says: 'What I needed to do instead was this whole series of exercises ... to strengthen and stabilise my body.' So a word of advice for those who are going to his concert next week: 'I'd say it's very important to choose a practice that is suitable for your body type,' Barley says. Relaxin' After Work, Jun 21 and 22, 7pm; All Things Strings, Jun 25, 7pm; All Things Strings for the Family, Jun 26, 3pm. Free admission. Inquiries: 2836 3336