Catching Up With Matthew Shipp

As Matthew Shipp enters his sixth decade he has nothing left to prove to the jazz cognoscenti. He has for 40-plus years worked at crafting an instantly recognizable language at the piano. When he moved to Manhattan's Lower East Side in the '80s, he immersed himself in the same do-it -yourself culture that produced the post-punk revolution of rock music and the emergence of hip-hop. That DIY attitude, the one that fueled rock and rap, was borrowed from New York's loft jazz scene. Some of Shipp's earliest recordings were released by former Black Flag frontman Henry Rollins on the 2.13.61 Records label. His involvement in music was in stark contrast to the neoconservative jazz musicians churned out from America's universities. Shipp was schooled in the bands of Roscoe Mitchell, David S. Ware, and William Parker while he was creating his own sound.

Today, he maintains an ongoing partnership with tenor saxophonist Ivo Perelman, leads his own piano trio, performs in the cooperative quartet East Axis, and has been for decades specializing in solo performance. With nearly 250 recordings as leader or sideman under his belt, the pianist has established himself as a master musician and now elder statesman of the avant-garde.

We spoke to him in early summer 2023 about his world post-pandemic and previewed some upcoming releases.

All About Jazz: With the COVID pandemic in the rearview mirror (hopefully), let's talk a bit about life before, during, and after COVID. I'd be interested in your perspective on how your musical career, performance and practice life has changed with the lockdown, and emergency.

Matthew Shipp: Well, I'm pretty focused about how I'm going about my business and I think the one thing I did was really focus on my practice routine a lot more, because before COVID I was on the road a lot. And obviously when COVID hit that ended and since then, I've been very, very selective about what I'm doing, and I'm focused on trying to open up the next phase of my development. I'm actually more focused on practicing than I am about trying to find work right now. Because I really want to ascend to the next level and I feel like made a lot of progress in that. I've always kind of been in my own world. Obviously, events from the outside world affect everything on a massive level, but that's always the case, but I think I've always inhabited my own world and COVID just increased that. I guess the answer is, it's forced me to be hyper-focused on my own development.

AAJ: Obviously with any artist, be it a visual artist or a recording artist artist, your world is, unless you're Vincent van Gogh and you don't sell paintings during your lifetime, your world revolves around getting your sound to people, or am I wrong about that?

MS: Yes, my world revolves around my music. My world generates from people hearing the music and discussing it. Being part of the fabric of whatever the historical continuum of this music is, and being a part of that discussion. That's how I operate. The money aspect of it has been heightened during COVID slightly, I don't know about heightened but has been concentrated upon as far as gigs. I'd been on the road 30 years before COVID. Taking the time, at the beginning of COVID, I had to kind of look for other ways to compensate for the income that was missing from touring. You know, there were some avenues that were open to me and I don't exactly have to be on the road in the ways that I was before. I've found some other ways to negotiate everything. So I have been going out and doing a bunch of one-offs and stuff like that. I just haven't been doing the type of tours that I did before COVID. I'm more concentrated on my actual development, especially in my solo piano playing and I'm really trying to—I want to use the same word again—ascend to that next level That is really been my only concern. Obviously, we're all concerned about making a living. That goes without saying, sure, but my concern is, is this next level that I feel actually truly transcendent on the instrument?

AAJ: Currently in front of me are two new discs. One is your duo with Mark Helias on RogueArt The New Syntax (2022) and the other one is this group East Axis No Subject (2023). Could you talk a little bit about both?

MS: Sure. The East Axis is a group cooperative that I'm in with Kevin Ray on bass, Gerald Cleaver on drums, and now Scott Robinson. It's on Christian McBride's label and part of the Mack Avenue group, and it's just a really beautiful kind of project. That's a cooperative and it's like minded people, but people you would not think of putting together, like, I never played with Scott Robinson before this group. But, it's the coming together of people you don't usually expect to put together, although Gerald Cleaver and I have had a long history. Sure, and to me it's kind of like the basic group, I can't really define. When we have a concert or go to the studio, I never exactly know what it's going to be, and everybody in the group has a lot of language and a lot of abilities to go different places in the music and depending on the mood they go wherever it goes. And it has really excited me because I never know where that is, as opposed to a group of my own. Even though there's a high level degree of improvisation, I usually know where I want it to go. Doesn't mean it always goes there, but anyway it is a truly a gift to be in this group and to be able to record for Christian's label and to play with a couple of musicians, at least in the group that I don't play with generally, because a lot of my work has been kind of me circulating various actors. When I call them actors, I'm using that term in a Shakespearean way, doing different projects with with a core group of people, so it's always an exciting time to have some new blood circulating and East Axis is that.

The duet with Mark Helias. Mark is not in the core group of people I usually play with, but he's been a friend of mine for years and we've been talking about doing a project together for years. It just never happened. So I ended up playing with him and Gordon Grdina in a previous group and we did a couple of tours. I don't remember if we did one or two tours. I know we did one in the West Coast and then we recorded a couple of albums and it was great playing with Mark in that setting. So when this chance came up with regard to a duo, I decided to record it and we did a concert together recently here in New York. I really love playing with Mark, despite the fact that he's not in my core group of people that I usually play with,

AAJ: And in that core group of people I guess we could identify Ivo Perelman, Michael Bisio, Mat Maneri, Joe Morris and William Parker

MS: I would put Rob Brown in there and Daniel Carter would be part of the core group of people.

AAJ: Another new name you recorded with is the cornetist Kirk Knuffke who is another very interesting player, a very creative individual.

MS: That was Gravity Without Airs on Tao Forms Records (2022) with Michael Bisio.

AAJ: I want to sort of back up to the beginnings, for you. I talked to a couple of friends the other day, and this is sort of a strange question, but I was asking them what was the very first LP purchased with your own money as a youngster? And I've got some strange answers. So I'm going to ask you the same question.

MS: Well, okay, I don't know if I remember their very first one, but I do remember the first LP I got for free when I was 12, I think it was a Downbeat subscription, you would get a free LP. It was Phineas Newborn, Jr., the solo LP which doesn't even have a title. It's just Phineas Newborn Jr. As far as purchasing, I remember, I know I had all the Jackson Five records. I don't know if I walked into a store and bought them myself. I do remember when I started getting jazz, like some of the first things that caught my eye, this is in the '70s and I would walk into this department store in Wilmington, Delaware. They had a lot of Atlantic Records and other labels, all of those albums caught my eye and I started buying some Yusef Lateef albums. Those made a big impact on me and I remember buying those myself.

AAJ: Fast forward a little bit, when you moved to New York. It seemed like you had some fantastic mentors or guides. David S. Ware, Roscoe Mitchell, William Parker and Daniel Carter were kind of your elders at the time. They sort of took the place of an academic education for you.

MS: I will back up from that a little bit. I had really great mentors before I moved. Like my teacher Dennis Sandole, who was kind of like my main guru. He was John Coltrane's teacher. I had spent time with a guy named Robert Boysie Lowery who was Clifford Brown's teacher in Wilmington, Delaware, and I had other mentors, some of them not even like music teachers, but just general kind of life mentors. That meant a lot to me. I was really lucky that I as far as what you call academic education, I don't know what that means in jazz. Jazz is a language. It's not about going to any school and learning anything.

It's a language and it's a code. And I talk about this in reference to Black Mystery School pianists in the essay that I did, it was a called Black Mystery School pianos that was circulated and talked about a lot. That lineage is a code that's just passed down by generations and who knows how it's passed down and the whole mechanism. All of that is a mystery. It just is and jazz being aligned with it has nothing to do with going to school. It's just, it's a vibration. It's out here and you learn however you learn. The best teacher is your own talent and the mentors that you get from an early age, whether it's older musicians that you hang out with or just experience from from thrusting yourself in gigs, even when you're in over your head, and learning from that. Just the persistence of every day. The academic aspect of it means nothing to me at all. Is Charlie Parker an academic product? Is John Coltrane an academic product? Obviously not. So why should I or anybody else be? If you've had any aspirations to play on a very, very high level and if people like Coltrane and Charlie Parker are your point of inspiration, then obviously you need to have a life that's in resonance with whatever the vibrations are of this music. This would bring the notes to you that need to be brought to you to be played on your instrument, and that's not done in a classroom. That's just not done in [an] academic setting. That's not to say that there's anything wrong with that. You mentioned mentors. If you're hanging around people that are part of the history of music, that seems to me to be worth ten-million times more than a college degree. Like why would I want a college degree if I can hang out with people that are actually part of the history of the music and they accept me? Like David S. Ware accepted me. He actually accepted me as an equal. It wasn't even like I was younger. He took me in as a collaborator and an equal. At that point, the idea of any college degree or networking with people with college degrees or any academic thing, it's meaningless to me because I don't need any of the legitimacy that academic supposedly brings to this. I need zero of it. I have a language that [the] universe put it in my head and I can sit down and articulate it. To my way of looking at things, anything other than the pure act of playing is social propaganda.

AAJ: You are of a certain age where you are the mentor, and you're the one that's imparting the wisdom and knowledge. Can you talk a little bit about the next generation of players? I know that you've worked with Mat Walerian.

MS: Right, he's actually somebody that I took an interest in.

AAJ: Any other players?

MS: I talked to a lot of people. There's a couple of them, I don't usually want to play with younger people, but I there's a couple people in New York that I occasionally get together with and play with. They're young, in their 20s. First of all, I think if somebody asks for advice or whatever, I don't really have anything to say to them unless they're already in resonance with whatever that is that I have to offer. On one level, there's the music that exists on documents—records—or I'm out playing live. Whatever anybody gets out of music that's on them. They have their own life experiences that they bring to the listening process. All I can do is put it out there, and then they receive it based on how their brain works. I have the gift of offering the music, which is what I'm here to do. Apart from that, if somebody comes to me for specific information or something like that, then I can give very general kind of truisms. I don't want to say "platitudes." There's general things that anybody who has experience in the arts are doing. This they can offer young people. Anything tailor-made for a specific person, that person would have to really trust my message and language. I would take the time and effort to try to figure out who they are. No, I can't get in anybody's brain and I can't live anybody's past experience and figure out what's right for them, but I can nudge them or give them suggestions based on my intuition about how they should go about things. I feel like there's a great quote, I can't remember who said it, that in jazz "every man is his own academy." That's very true, everybody has their own path. I use the word God, not in a religious sense, but whatever the creative energy behind the universe, it's almost as if God put everybody on a different path. Put obstacles in the way and it's up to you to be able to clear the obstacles and figure out what the path is. All any type of teacher or guide can do is maybe see things that you can't see because of their experience and they can guide you, but everybody has to kind of figure out for themselves what really works for them. I can be of help to anybody doing that if I feel that they're really righteous in their intent, and I'm happy to be of help. It's usually no big deal. It's using experience that maybe I can see things you can't in your 20s. I'm always glad to be of help if I can.

AAJ: Your experience in recording is massive. If we go all the way back to the late '80s, early '90s—I'm bringing this up because of the reissue that's coming—I'd like you to talk about Circular Temple (Quinton Records, 1990) and where it was and what we can expect with respect to that. Was Circular Temple your first session as a leader?

MS: Yes, Circular Temple was my first CD. I started recording right at the cusp of when LPs still existed right before CDs came out. My first album was an LP called Sonic Explorations (Cadence Jazz Records, 1988), and it was a co-led with Rob Brown. I wasn't necessarily the leader, it was a duo and it was an LP. Circular Temple was the first Matthew Shipp group, and it was the first CD.

AAJ: And that was recorded in 1990 and I understand there's going to be a reissue of the Circular Temple recording.

MS: ESP-Disk' is going to reissue a series of my recordings starting in September of [2023] and the first thing will be Circular Temple, which has been in many incarnations and it's currently out of print. That will be the first reissue and at a later date, they'll be reissuing Zo (Rise Records, 1994), which was a duo with William Parker in the 90s. And then the third reissue they're going to do is Zer0 (ESP-Disk' ,2018). They're gonna reissue that on vinyl, because it was never done on vinyl. So yes, this ESP-Disk' reissue series is starting and Circular Temple will be the first on the series.

AAJ: I have to ask you, what's it like to listen to yourself? In the case of Circular Temple, from 1990?

MS: Well, I'm into the idea of world building or every album is its own cosmos building. I look at each album as an organism, so, the same way our cells replace each other. Every couple of years, every cell in your body is new. I look at the musical organism as constantly mutating and then replicating. All that to say, when I look back at it, it's a whole different Shipp. It's a whole different organism, it's a whole different configuration. It's like looking at a different person. Obviously, there's some connecting links between an album that I did in 1990 and an album now, because it's me. But what is the me? Kind of like photo of yourself when you're 16 or 18, or 30 and 60. It's the same person, but the whole body's changed, everything is changed. That's not to say that you were any better at 60 than you are at 18. There's probably things you might have been keyed into when you're 18 that you've probably lost. So despite your maturity and despite your experience, looking like a different organism now, and it's intriguing in that sense, because there's a whole new mentality and mindset, a psychological space that I occupied then, and it's completely different than the psychological space I operate in now. Sure, it's pretty interesting to see the decisions that were made. It's interesting. You were cocky. Nothing's 100%, but you're more in tune with what you're doing now. You kind of have to step back and isolate the fact that it's you and take it for what it is, which was a complete statement at the time. That's what it was: a complete statement about who you were and where you were at at the time. Is there a growth since then? Of course, but does that mean that an old statement is not 100% consistent with what it should have been at the time? You had to go into the listening experience with that mindset, because it is really interesting how you can completely change the psychological space you operate out of within a year, a couple years, let alone 33 years.

AAJ: With respect to the solo recordings, those are a kind of photograph or snapshot. We can trace your solo playing over more than a dozen solo performances captured on disk all the way back to Before The World on FMP (1997) and then Symbol Systems (No More Records, 1995), Songs (Splasc(H) Records, 2002), 4D (Thirsty Ear, 2010), all the way up to, I understand there's a new solo recording coming out in fall 2023.

MS: It's called The Intrinsic Nature Of Shipp on Mahakala records, and that's my new solo coming this fall.

AAJ: Another snapshot from your audio photo album this fall. What else is coming that we can look forward to?

MS: First of all, my whole consciousness right now is behind the solo coming out. That's my grand statement for who I am now. Solo piano has become kind of a major focus. Of course, there's the ESP-Disk' reissue series, and my collaborations with Ivo Perelman will continue. So I'm keeping it pretty simple these days. It's mainly solo, duo with Ivo, and occasionally with the trio. The trio is in a very important aspect of my life. I don't know where the recorded history of that is headed, just because our last album World Construct (ESP-Disk,' 2022) really did well for us. It kind of felt like an apotheosis of the trio in some extent. So I haven't figured out what the next step is with the trio after that. I don't want to record just to record if it's not taking it to the next level after World Construct. I just don't know what the next level is yet. Of course, the next level is usually bound up in the process of doing it. But before we do it, I have to feel that it finally is a possibility. I'm just waiting for the voices inside my head to let me know what's going on with that. But again, the major focus would be my solo album coming out, The Intrinsic Nature Of Shipp. Solo playing is the clearest exposition of my voice for me at this period, because as much as I love to interact with other musicians, because I love to figure out where people enter into the equation based on the chemistry of the chemical combustion of me and whoever I'm collaborating with creating a third force that is up above and beyond wherever our individual species is. To create some type of story between us, it just flows directly unimpeded by the idea of interaction with other human beings, creatures, or whatever you want to call the energy for another human being is, and it's just a direct flow of language in its purest form. So there's no grand designs, I'm just trying to get through each day as each day presents itself.

AAJ: you are also meeting a new player I understand. The Norwegian, saxophonist/clarinetist Frode Gjerstad.

MS: It will be released on Relative Pitch.This is the second recording, a duo. I also did a trio with Gjerstad and Fred Lonberg-Holm (Season Of Sadness, Iluso, 2019). This is a duo disc coming out. So a lot of fun. I think it came out decent.

AAJ: That's the upcoming future 2023 recorded music for Matthew Shipp. I understand you also collaborated on a project with Clifford Allen.

MS: Clifford is writing a book on my RogueArt catalog. People that follow my music know that there's a long series of albums on Thirsty Ear where I actually work as a curator for the series, and I am now working with ESP-Disk.' I've also had a long association with Hat ART and other labels. RogueArt is one of the labels that I've done a lot sides on as a leader, and a few as a sideman. So it's a whole body of work within a body of work and Clifford Allen is writing a book about that particular series. The book is about my RogueArt CDs, but it gets into a lot of issues that transcend those CDs and transcends me. So in a sense, the CDs are and my work on RogueArt is the catalyst for us to get into a lot of stuff, and there's a lot of interviews in the book with people that I worked with on the RogueArt CDs. It is a comprehensive book about a lot of different things. But the starting point is my RogueArt catalog.

AAJ: Your daily routine. We talked about this a while ago in person, but can you tell the readers what your daily routine is?

MS: To get myself out of bed, because I like to be comfortable. And when you're asleep, you don't have to deal with all the areas. And then you wake up. When I play, I claim to be an angel and I claim to have direct contact with angelic voices. But the regular everyday stuff, the angels want nothing to do with that. That's not me. So yeah, there's the regular part. The major part of my day is doing to my practice, because I don't have a piano in my apartment, and I have to get to a place where I practice, which is a studio. I have a really good relationship with the people in the studio. That's the major part of my day: going to the studio and trying to get some work. I try to get there every day, that's the major part. From there, it's what everybody else has to do, answer an email, which I am actually very lax, because my PC broke. I don't do email on my phone, and I since my PC broke, I never bought another one because I was spending way too much time on social media. I don't have the time. I was spending a lot of time on social media, especially during the Trump era, where I had a page dedicated to post nasty things about him every day. I was spending way too much time on social media and it just wasn't healthy.

AAJ: It seems that the people who have walked away from social media are a lot healthier mentally.

MS: I haven't 100%. If I was on social media hours a day at one point now I'm only on like that once a week for a half hour. As far as my routine, the rest of it's like anybody else's day. The fact that I do have some spiritual disciplines that I try to do at night, I'm trying you know. I'm not expecting to drop dead or anything. I have entered a phase in my life that you might call the last phase and the last phrase could last 20 or 30 years. There's very few things that really hold importance to me at this point in my life and I'm trying to concentrate on a few things that are not extraneous. So that whittles out almost everything. Sure, I'm really focused on the few things that really are important, both to me and to what I consider my contribution to the world and trying to live some type of healthy existence within a system and in a world that is completely off kilter.

AAJ: Before we go, is there anything that I didn't ask you that I should have?

MS: I just want to say that I feel everybody wants to have more money, everybody wants to have more recognition. Despite wherever their recognition level is, they always think they deserve a bit more. I must say I do feel grateful that I've been able to document music, make a living at it. That's not to say that I don't have my pet peeves and I have things that I think should have gone different ways, but despite all that, I must say I feel grateful that we can have this phone call and do this interview. I have been able to document the music and I have been able to somewhat keep my sanity and survive. I ran into a friend of mine the other day on the street, and he's a dancer, he's around my age. We looked at each other and the first thing is like, "wow, we made this far." I knew him in the '80s and we looked at each other and said "wow, there's there's a lot to be grateful for."

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