Producer, composer, sideman, and soloist Matthew Shipp arrived in New York City 20 years ago, and in the interim has become arguably the most important player on the downtown avant-garde scene. Throughout the ‘90s, initially with the David S. Ware quartet, then as a leader most often with bassist William Parker at his side, Shipp recorded with Roscoe Mitchell, Rob Brown, Roy Campbell, Wadada Leo Smith, Other Dimensions in Music and with violinist Mat Maneri and Parker in the Matthew Shipp String Trio. Recently, Shipp has distinguished himself as the Artistic Director of the Thirsty Ear Blue Series. Shipp's own playing blends modern classical elements with '60s-style jazz to create something wholly original and influential among his generation of improvising musicians.

All About Jazz: What does the Artistic Director of the Thirsty Ear Blue Series do?

Matthew Shipp: In a lot of ways I'm just a figurehead, but actually, A&R. I bring artists in, help Peter [Gordon, head of Thirsty Ear] conceive projects. Conceive ways of promoting various projects.

AAJ: Are there people outside of the label who come to you and say, "Matt, I'd like to do a record for Thirsty Ear."?

MS: Yeah, but Peter and I basically sit and put our heads together and come up with a whole series of ideas. People do approach us, but it's so difficult out here, we kind of have to work in a certain way. We can't just sign somebody out of the blue, I mean, unless the conditions were really right for that.

AAJ: What convinces you to put something on record?

MS: I love the medium. I'm a very concentrated person in the studio, and I really love the whole creative process that goes into conceiving and putting out an album. I really thrive off the idea of documents that are part of my personality. The music on a CD, if you could look into my brain and maybe X-ray it, that CD is in my brain, and yet it takes form in the world and it's sold over the counter as product, and people go in their house and put it on and that just fascinates me.

AAJ: What identifies you as a leader of a session?

MS: There's a certain will that I exert to get a certain effect. If the will is coming from me to get that effect, and it's unrelenting in a certain direction and it's completely coming from me, then you have your blueprint for that CD. The idea of the Sorcerer Sessions was to bring classical musicians together with some jazz avant-garde players and create this new, ambient-sounding, quasi-classical, quasi-modern jazz type of thing. I've been working in that area for a long time anyway, so we brought some classical musicians in, Evan Ziporyn (clarinets) and Daniel Bernard Roumain (violin), that don't usually record in a jazz setting, and it just made for a slightly different type of result.

AAJ: Who are you listening to that has influenced this new sound?

MS: I don't know if it's who I'm listening to other than maybe an overall cultural thing. I think living in an urban setting like New York City, having the type of friends I have, it just seems to be in the air. For instance, some of the electronica people I've collaborated with are people around my age group, maybe a little younger sometimes. We share a common world view and common artistic goals, it just happens that I play jazz and they might play a different type of music like Anti-Pop Consortium, DJ Spooky, Spring Heel Jack. When I talk with them I feel at home with them, even though we're sort of in different genres. In essence, we're trying to get at a lot of the same things in our music, we may just have a slightly different outward veneer, but that outward veneer can be melted away to try and get to the essence, the core, and at that point genre doesn't become an issue, it's just modern music. I listen to that type of music and I like it, so it just feels natural to say that modern jazz and it have a meeting point.

AAJ: How do some of the other players in the Blue Series, like Mat Maneri and William Parker, influence your music, and how do you influence each other?