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Matthew Shipp's 1990 Trio Debut · The Piano Maven with Jed Distler

• 0:00
  Hello, friends.
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  This is Jay Distler, and I thank you for joining me for this episode of The Piano Maven, your
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  friendly podcast guide to piano recordings.
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  When I began this podcast a few months ago, a listener wrote to me and asked if I planned
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  to talk about jazz pianists.
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  Originally, my idea was to focus on recordings of classical pianists and classical repertoire,
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  but then I thought, wait a minute, jazz piano has one of the richest keyboard traditions
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  and heritages, and there's such a prodigious wealth of stylistic diversity in jazz piano.
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  So from time to time, I will devote episodes to jazz piano recordings.
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  I have been acquainted with pianist Matthew Shipp for more than 20 years, although I don't
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  know him well personally, but I have followed his prolific recorded output with great interest
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  and admiration.
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  He also offers some of the most insightful and provocative musical commentary on my social
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  media feed, and I'm always impressed by his verbal honesty and how he follows his ears
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  and how he calls things as he hears them, and he refuses to find safe harbor in the
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  world of received opinion.
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  Recently, the ESP Disc label reissued Matthew's very first release featuring himself in a
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  classic piano, bass, and drums trio format.
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  This recording dates from 1990, and it's a four-part suite entitled Circular Temple.
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  It was first released on Matthew Shipp's own label, Quinton, and then in 1994, it appeared
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  on Henry Rolland's Infinite Zero label.
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  Matthew Shipp collaborates with bassist William Parker and percussionist Whit Dickey in music
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  that touches upon thick cacophony, sparse spaciousness, subtle textural interplay where rapid bowed
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  bass double stops intertwine with billowy piano chords and a wide variety of cymbal strokes.
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  Sometimes Cecil Taylor's wild flourishes come to mind as I listen to Matthew Shipp,
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  except that Matthew's pianism has more air in between the notes, I dare say, and there's
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  a light suppleness to his touch in rapid passages that I find very appealing.
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  There's also a lot of sly humor in his piano work.
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  The second section of this suite is appropriately titled Monk's Nightmare because the angular
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  melodies that are deliberately patterned after Thelonious Monk's style quickly morph into
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  combative clusters and wild runs up and down the keyboard, definitely nightmare-like.
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  However, the long fourth section of this suite features an extensive piano solo sequence
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  where long legato lines are punctuated by quiet staccato jabs in the bass register.
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  Matthew has a way of playing texturally and dynamically contrasted asymmetric material
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  in both hands, and he does this in a way that keep your ears off balance.
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  It's like a juggling act, but nothing ever, ever, ever sounds cluttered.
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  Even Matthew's most fragmented ideas reveal more shape and continuity on repeated hearings,
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  and sometimes I hear these high-velocity ostinatos that build up into big sustained chords, and
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  then they retreat into speedy unison runs in the lower register in both hands.
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  In short, there's a lot going on, and what I said about Matthew Shipp's pianism, communicating
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  density without clutter, equally applies to his fellow musicians.
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  It goes without saying that Matthew Shipp's artistry has developed and evolved tenfold
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  since this particular 1990 recording, and I think he's now in his most fertile and creative
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  period, and anything he does is well worth hearing.
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  But this release remains a youthful milestone in his career, and its reissue on the ESP
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  disc label is most welcome.
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  I've posted a link to purchase this disc in my episode details.
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  So this is Jed Disler for the Piano Maven, your friendly podcast guide to piano recordings,
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  and I hope you will check out Matthew Shipp.
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  Happy listening.