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Art of the Improviser
Art of the Improviser in Bloomington, MN
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Since the late 1980s, pianist
Matthew Shipp
has been rigorously investigating what it means to be an improvising musician by creating a musical language that is as expansive as it is intuitive emotionally, cerebrally, and emotionally following his own path alongside those of his predecessors
Ornette Coleman
,
John Coltrane
Sun Ra
Cecil Taylor
Derek Bailey
Anthony Braxton
John Cage
, and
Morton Feldman
. His explorations have taken him through jazz as a soloist, bandleader, and sideman to collaborative experiments with electronic sound and even modern classical music. He's been prolific in documenting each chapter in his musical life.
Art of the Improviser
is a double-CD package containing two 2010 concert performances. Disc 1 places
Shipp
in a trio setting with bassist
Michael Bisio
and drummer
Whit Dickey
in Troy, NY, and the second disc is a solo recital from (Le Poisson) Rouge in New York City two months later. On the trio disc,
reveals his strengths as both a bandleader and collaborator. The rumbling modal opening of
"The New Fact"
quickly gives way to a syncopated, jagged swing as his piano jots telegraphic lines to
Dickey
, who follows and accents intuitively while
Bisio
balances them with a swaying but unbending bridge.
moves through various periods in jazz history, from
Jelly Roll Morton
and
Art Tatum
to
Herbie Hancock
McCoy Tyner
Horace Tapscott
. Elsewhere on disc one, his pieces
"Circular Temple #3"
"The Virgin Complex"
are given strident readings with their original melodies harmonically extrapolated onto new ones, with improvisation interspersed like links in a chain. The lone standard on disc one,
"Take the 'A' Train,"
is performed with
's angular harmonic language without losing its swing or fingerpopping melodic identity. The solo recital on disc two also features one standard,
"Fly Me to the Moon,"
which begins as an extension of
's recent composition, the gloriously physical
"4D."
And indeed it might as well be, because of the way he pulls the melody from the changes, angles them at one another, and inserts his own series of intervallic questions at the ends of phrases, taking them through labyrinthine passages before returning to here he left off.
"Gamma Ray"
extrapolates on
Thelonious Monk
's black key lyricism while
"Patmos"
is a lower- and middle-register song employing Eastern tonalities and modalism.
serves as a testament to
's achievements, yet it is also a continuation of the discovery in his developmental musical language. ~ Thom Jurek
Matthew Shipp
has been rigorously investigating what it means to be an improvising musician by creating a musical language that is as expansive as it is intuitive emotionally, cerebrally, and emotionally following his own path alongside those of his predecessors
Ornette Coleman
,
John Coltrane
Sun Ra
Cecil Taylor
Derek Bailey
Anthony Braxton
John Cage
, and
Morton Feldman
. His explorations have taken him through jazz as a soloist, bandleader, and sideman to collaborative experiments with electronic sound and even modern classical music. He's been prolific in documenting each chapter in his musical life.
Art of the Improviser
is a double-CD package containing two 2010 concert performances. Disc 1 places
Shipp
in a trio setting with bassist
Michael Bisio
and drummer
Whit Dickey
in Troy, NY, and the second disc is a solo recital from (Le Poisson) Rouge in New York City two months later. On the trio disc,
reveals his strengths as both a bandleader and collaborator. The rumbling modal opening of
"The New Fact"
quickly gives way to a syncopated, jagged swing as his piano jots telegraphic lines to
Dickey
, who follows and accents intuitively while
Bisio
balances them with a swaying but unbending bridge.
moves through various periods in jazz history, from
Jelly Roll Morton
and
Art Tatum
to
Herbie Hancock
McCoy Tyner
Horace Tapscott
. Elsewhere on disc one, his pieces
"Circular Temple #3"
"The Virgin Complex"
are given strident readings with their original melodies harmonically extrapolated onto new ones, with improvisation interspersed like links in a chain. The lone standard on disc one,
"Take the 'A' Train,"
is performed with
's angular harmonic language without losing its swing or fingerpopping melodic identity. The solo recital on disc two also features one standard,
"Fly Me to the Moon,"
which begins as an extension of
's recent composition, the gloriously physical
"4D."
And indeed it might as well be, because of the way he pulls the melody from the changes, angles them at one another, and inserts his own series of intervallic questions at the ends of phrases, taking them through labyrinthine passages before returning to here he left off.
"Gamma Ray"
extrapolates on
Thelonious Monk
's black key lyricism while
"Patmos"
is a lower- and middle-register song employing Eastern tonalities and modalism.
serves as a testament to
's achievements, yet it is also a continuation of the discovery in his developmental musical language. ~ Thom Jurek
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