Matthew Shipp: Tripling the Play

Going it alone to discover what lies beneath the skin is an adventure that results in an education, coming from no other place than where that adventure goes. Ever since the release of his album, One (Thirsty Ear, 2006), determined to stretch himself, Shipp embraced a solo touring year. He reflects on the time as one where his consciousness was raised through certain "epiphanies" which have induced him to "keep [his] musical instincts sharp." He feels that he "does not have to force things"; he is "more confident in himself...more relaxed...more free..." He can "do whatever he wants to."

Shipp still staunchly believes that every strike of the keys unlocks new doors to the universes that only his music can unleash. The "purity and austerity" emanating from his solo ventures taught him to meet the challenges and to explore the "aura and fragrance" of any other music-making situation. His connectedness to his playing is steadfast; how deeply he delves into that connectedness becomes his objective at every turn and the deeper he digs, the more he is convinced that how the music happens "is all a mystery."

Shipp can see more clearly that "overall, his approach is slowly changing," particularly in relation to his musical vocabulary, his attack on the keys and the dynamics he generates. The ways in which he conceptualizes the music will always depend on the context in which he plays, on his own or with a group. The context and environment are entities which Shipp inextricably links to the fluctuation of his musical language, which he understands as "invisible" and relating to "energy and non-logical language...in other words, spirit."

The spirit that infuses Shipp's music infiltrates his life, reinvigorates him and gives him breath. His ideas for projects are continual and the ones for trios recently seem to rise to the top. He has played with two trios since 2006; one with drummer Gerald Cleaver and bassist William Parker and the other featuring bassist Joe Morris and drummer Whit Dickey.

In the trio format, Shipp discerns that he can now "play through the music as opposed to on top of it." He can feel the "flow of language of the others in a little clearer way," so that "the boundaries can melt between the instruments." Now that Shipp has come through his solitary undertaking, he can present himself to his band mates "naked," within the realm of interactive possibilities. He loves this. For what is creation but to reincarnate and reinvent the universe?

Who could have predicted, therefore, that a spur-of-the-moment studio session which Shipp concocted in February of 2007 with bassist Morris and drummer Dickey, would have produced another recording?

Shipp's Piano Vortex (Thirsty Ear, 2007) is the result of that session. It is an album that arose from no preconceptions or pre-mediations. In the cab ride to the studio on a day in February, Shipp carried no briefcase, just "a backload [of music] in his mind." The only precedent was that the three musicians had played together for over twenty years and knew "each other beyond inside-out." When there is no pressure to produce anything, Shipp says, "different strategies come out" through participating in an organic tripartite musicality and the joy of "simply fooling around." Without having a "narrative in mind, the material wasn't shaped" and, as the leader of the band, Shipp could keep the intention that whatever transpired would bear no resemblance to "Sacred Geometry," his composed ensemble piece, presented at New York's The Kitchen in November of 2006.

With a refreshed sense of his innate capacities lighting the way, Shipp found that co-mingling with the musical abilities of Morris and Dickey carved out a means to "strive for utter simplicity." Endemic to the simplicity he desires is the intensity of symbiosis among the musicians which means everything to Shipp: he is "looking for a completely integrated trio sound." He says, "sometimes when I listen back to Piano Vortex , I'm not sure if a certain gesture comes from the bass drum or the bass or the bass register of the piano."

Shipp's observation implies that he is attaining his goal. When non-teetering, ecstatic moments of a penultimate set of harmonic vibrations cross his path, he can hear it; he knows he can replicate the process because it is now inscribed in his genes. "The solo things" can intertwine with "the trio things" and the trio things can intertwine with the solo things and the universe can be one.

Just as in a trio setting, when Shipp performs alone, he seeks to merge with the human element that exists outside of his own musician-instrument amalgam. Although the symbiotic relationship he secures with fellow musicians "is impossible to explain," Shipp establishes a relationship with his audience he needs in order "to complete the circuitry." He needs "his language to come alive in someone else's energy field."

"Jazz is a linear art," Shipp proclaims. The musical lines within jazz ceaselessly converge and dissipate and are continuous; they have "weight and density, grace and beauty."

When, with unswerving vibrancy, Shipp's language swells from the keyboard into multiplicities of ambient radiance, the resultant wave configuration can be imagined, with difficulty, in the physical sense. But, in the spiritual sense, the impact of his music is simply infinite, a slice of his "never-ending quest to experience eternity," a phenomenon that defies understanding, but to which Shipp can feel sure that he is coming close.

Selected Discography

Matthew Shipp, Piano Vortex (Thirsty Ear, 2007)
Matthew Shipp, One (Thirsty Ear, 2006)
Matthew Shipp, Harmony and Abyss (Thirsty Ear, 2004)
Matthew Shipp, Equilibrium (Thirsty Ear, 2003)
Matthew Shipp, Nu Bop (Thirsty Ear, 2002)
Matthew Shipp String Trio, Expansion, Power, Release (HatOLOGY, 2001)
Matthew Shipp, Songs (Splasc(H) Records, 2001)
Matthew Shipp Quintet, Pastoral Composure (Thirsty Ear, 2000)
Matthew Shipp Trio, Prism (HatOLOGY, 2000)
Matthew Shipp Duo, DNA (Thirsty Ear, 1999)
Matthew Shipp Trio, The Multiplication Table (HatHUT, 1998)

Photo Credit
Lyn Horton

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