By Matt Rand

It's usually a good sign when everyone on a record label has played with just about everyone else on the label. That kind of familiarity results in the making of what often winds up being, counter-intuitively, some of the most syncretic and creative music around. After making the evolution from a marketing company for obscure and college music to a full-fledged record label, Thirsty Ear's President, Peter Gordon, certainly had this in mind when he gave Matthew Shipp the green light to curate and develop its Blue Series. With the stated goal of "marrying jazz's many languages," the series set out on the ambitious task of taking jazz in new directions.

Two years and over 10 releases later, the Blue Series has become a home for a growing community of musical experimentation. Each new release has its own specific goals, goals that are "conceived before the first note," says Gordon, "we say, 'let's go from note one and design a structure and create a concept.'"

Shipp is generally responsible for creating these concepts, piecing together musicians whom he thinks will make something new. From there the label works with the musicians, usually most intensively with the session leader, to map the group's potential and ensure that each musician is used in the way most appropriate for the project.

There's little, for instance, that Shipp's latest release, nu bop, has in common with William Parker's upcoming release, Raining on the Moon, yet each record rests solidly on Parker's soft-spoken insistence on bass. And while Parker retains a distinctly Parker-esque style through both records, his bass work on his own project centers around his and drummer Hamid Drake's funky rhythm section, while his work on nu bop follows Shipp's more frenetic lead on piano.

Parker's versatility points to a duality that emerges for Thirsty Ear, the struggle between the label's attempts to innovate and its inherent link to the old, the frame of reference that its musicians create. Where nu bop finds Parker reaching out, with Shipp, through electronic beats and ambiences programmed by Chris Flam, Parker's work on Raining on the Moon, while certainly fresh, shows his more traditional roots. And in so doing, even if implied, it points to an evolution of sound, a passing of DNA from old to new. It's a transition that can eventually become its own form of stagnation, forcing the label to keep running, in a way, from whence it came, if it wants to avoid doing "anything we've already done."

This becomes evident in drummer Guillermo Brown's debut release, Soul at the Hands of the Machine, where Chris Flam creates an even less human, though no less compelling, sound for musicians like Brown and wind player Daniel Carter (also on nu bop) to play with, and on upcoming releases like the planned collaboration between Shipp and the dark hip-hop outfit, Anti-Pop Consortium. But Gordon understands that, for a group of jazz players, he's playing with fire here, as "the machine can be a point of inspiration, and it can also be a point of death."

Which makes it all the more relieving to also hear Brown drumming with Roy Campbell's acoustic band, a band that gives a nod all the way back to Monk's "Bemsha Swing," on It's Krunch Time. Not to mention Craig Taborn's Light Made Lighter, where the usually electrified keyboard player opts to make music that does its reaching outside through the sound of a traditional piano trio. Sure, Gordon knows that he and Shipp are playing with fire, but making creative music's not about to start being safe.

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This article first appeared in the May 2002 issue of the All About Jazz: New York newspaper.