Barry Phillips BioBarry Phillips has spent a lifetime telling stories through music. His musical landscapes stretch from the Appalachian hills to the Palace Grounds of Bangalore, from the Royal Albert Hall to the small recording studio where he often records.
He studied composition formally at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, under Elinor Armer. What he learned there, he applies to modern composition, singer-songwriter sessions, and folk music composition and arranging. In 1996, Phillips crossed a threshold: he became a student and composition assistant to Barat Ratna Ravi Shankar. For sixteen years, he helped his Guru Ravi Shankar compose works for Mstislav Rostropovich, Joshua Bell, Philip Glass and many others. He assisted Mr. Shankar with "Arpan," an Indian orchestra piece for the memorial tribute to George Harrison held at the Royal Albert Hall in 2002. Barry engineered Ravi Shankar's recording "The Living Room Sessions," which received a Grammy in the category of world music in 2013. He toured the world with Anoushka Shankar’s group—venues included the Hollywood Bowl, Sydney Opera House, Istanbul’s CRR Hall. Phillips' own recordings--Cello, Tråd, Summer of Cello, Notebook—carry the unmistakable sense of someone listening carefully, faithfully, to the spaces between traditions. His work has been called "a collage of music from all over the world," a phrase that says that Barry Phillips sees the connective tissue and celebrates it. His arrangements of Shaker hymns and Northern European folk tunes suggest not nostalgia, but a modern reckoning with the past. His cello threads through Ken Burns documentaries, Netflix shows, and numerous albums. He lives and works in Santa Cruz, California - when he’s not visiting the rivers of the Sierra Nevada. |
Evening raga swells--
he writes, chasing every turn, each note a deep bow. 
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The Anoushka Shankar Project - Hollywood Bowl - March 15, 2010