Matthew Shipp: Shipp Shifts
Pianist Matthew Shipp's artistic collaboration community is a counterpart to his business community. It is its own ecosystem of multidisciplinary work, scholarly conversations and mentorship. The Trio The trio is Shipp's main vehicle. It is, by turns, his midnight train, his slow boat to China and a way of flying home. It takes a hike, rides ...
Read MoreMarcus Miller: Renaissance Man
[Editor's Note: On Sunday, November 25, 2012, All About Jazz learned that Marcus Miller sustained non-life-threatening injuries during a bus crash on the A2 highway in central Switzerland. Unfortunately, the driver was killed in the accident. Online sources report that the bus was carrying 13 people, including two drivers and the 11 members Miller's band. The ...
Read MoreMatthew Shipp: Shipp Shape
Pianist Matthew Shipp is very keenly attuned to the details and nuances of what has to be the most forlorn and anemic environment imaginable for anything a sensible person would call business. Think of it as the sort of business ecosystem that resembles the least habitable places on earth, say a fumarole at the bottom of ...
Read MoreCelebrating Miles Davis with Quotes
We're celebrating Miles Davis's birthday (May 26, 1926) with quotes about him and by him. All About Jazz senior writer R.J. DeLuke also compiled several from his past interviews with various ex-band members--and we included a salty one by Miles for good measure. If you know of a quote about Miles or one that can be ...
Read MoreManfred Eicher: Through the Lens
It begins in silence, always silence. Since the 1990s, all ECM recordings begin with five seconds of silence, and so, too, do directors Norbert Wiedmer and Peter Guyer open their feature film on the heralded German record label and its enigmatic founder, Sounds and Silence: Travels with Manfred Eicher. As longtime ECM recording artist Keith Jarrett's ...
Read MoreJohn McNeil's Backbone
Like many trumpeters, John McNeil has a unique brand above his upper lip where flesh meets metal. It looks like a setting sun, and was visible from up close, as he removed his instrument from his mouth, rose steadily from his stool, and grasped the microphone.
“This is the part of any jazz gig where the ...
Read MoreFred Anderson: 1929-2010
There aren't many artists with so singular a vision as that of late Fred Anderson, who died June 24 at the age of 81. There are fewer to be certain if the list is restricted to members of that exalted and nebulous class called “masters." It's a word that, in jazz, gets thrown around a little ...
Read MoreMatthew Shipp: Traversing The Regions of the Mind
On May 17, 2009, at 6 pm, Matthew Shipp walked through the front door of Roulette, a performance venue on the Lower East Side in New York City. His face appeared no more or less expressive than it normally does. He is wont to demonstrate his feelings facially, except through laughter and an occasional smile. On ...
Read MoreDjango at 100
Call it Django or Gypsy jazz, Hot Club, swing or Manouche (another name for gypsy), it's a style that hits you immediately--blazing, hard-picked runs played on a hyper-resonant, flat-top guitar (sound-holes are oval or D-shaped, never round), its intense momentum propelled by bass and rhythm guitar(s), often in tandem with violin, clarinet or accordion and working ...
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