Matthew Shipp Quartet with Paul Dunmall: London, September 8, 2011

John Sharpe

Concert/Festival Reviewer since 2004

John first fell under the spell of free jazz in the 1970s when he wistfully regarded the loft jazz scene from across the Atlantic

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Published: September 29, 2011

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Even with such wonderful parts, the whole was greater, as exemplified by the quicksilver pas de deux between Dunmall and Shipp which began the second piece in first set. Shipp settled on a pattern which provided the port of entry for drums and bass and propelled the reedman into a skittering, rapid-fire excursion. A crescendo of overblown shrieks acted as a fulcrum, tipping Shipp's comping to mirror the reedman's hyper-fast staccato. Similarly the start of the second set illustrated how easily inspiration might be gleaned: at one point Sanders struck his drums with a tiny finger cymbal to achieve a clipped reverberation, which Shipp somehow echoed on the piano, flicking his hands from the keys outwards to replicate the sonority, before adopting it as a motif which once more launched Dunmall's high-intensity soprano saxophone, peppered with some astonishing vocalized cries.

Both sets of Shipp's gig with Parker the previous day were recorded along with a studio session the afternoon of this concert for release on the Paris-based Rogue Art label in 2013. Any aspiring producer looking for new pleasures in the meantime could do much worse that document this fabulous quartet.

Photo Credit
All Photos: John Sharpe

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