* En anglais uniquement
With a unique, instantly recognizable style, pianist
Matthew Shipp has been active on the international jazz scene since late 1980s. His boundary-less musical approach crisscrosses free jazz, elliptical post-bop, and modern classical music. He served as pianist in
the David S. Ware Quartet during the early '90s before leading his own dates and recording duos with a variety of musicians. He released his solo debut,
Symbol Systems, in 1995 as well as the quartet offering Critical Mass. He issued many recordings for Hat -- including 2001's
Expansion, Power, Release -- and Thirsty Ear, including 2007's
Piano Vortex and 2013's
Piano Sutras.
Shipp also records for France's Rogue Art label, which issued 2013's Rex, Wrecks & XXX with
Evan Parker, and 2015's Our Lady of the Flowers. In 2016
Shipp began playing and recording in several bands for ESP-Disk with reedist
Mat Walerian under the names Uppercut and Jungle; each released a Live at Okuden volume that year. In 2018,
Shipp released the solo Zero. 2020 saw the release of Welcome Adventure, Vol. 1, by a collective that included saxophonist
Daniel Carter. In 2021, he issued the trio offering
Village Mothership and the solo
Codebreaker for Tao Forms. 2022 saw the release of Old Stories, a double-length duo set with saxophonist
Chad Fowler, Welcome Adventure, Vol. 2, and the trio date
World Construct for ESP-Disk.
Born in 1960 and raised in Wilmington, Delaware,
Shipp grew up around '50s jazz recordings. He began playing piano at the young age of five and decided to focus on jazz by the time he was 12. He played a Fender Rhodes in rock bands while privately devouring recordings by a variety of jazz players. His first mentor was a man in his hometown named Sunyata, who was enthusiastic about a variety of subjects in addition to music.
Shipp later studied music theory and improvisation under
Clifford Brown's teacher Robert "Boisey" Lawrey, as well as classical piano and bass clarinet for the school band. After one year at the University of Delaware,
Shipp left and took lessons with
Dennis Sandole for a short time, after which he attended the New England Conservatory of Music for two years.
Shipp moved to N.Y.C. in 1984 and soon met bassist
William Parker, among others. Both were playing with tenor saxophonist
Ware by 1989. Meanwhile,
Shipp had debuted as a recording artist in a duo with alto player
Rob Brown on Sonic Explorations, recorded in November 1987 and February 1988.
Shipp married singer Delia Scaife around 1990. He went on to lead his own trio with
Parker and drummers
Whit Dickey and
Susie Ibarra.
Shipp has led dates for a number of labels, including FMP, No More, Eremite, Thirsty Ear, and Silkheart. In 2000, he began acting as curator for Thirsty Ear's
Blue Series, which hosted a number of
Shipp's own recordings, as well as the recordings of
William Parker,
Tim Berne,
Roy Campbell,
Craig Taborn,
Spring Heel Jack, and
Mat Maneri. The following year saw the release of
Nu Bop, an exploration into traditional jazz, followed closely by its 2003 counterpart,
Equilibrium. In 2004,
Shipp released
Harmony and Abyss, a meditation on repetitive melodic and harmonic structures.
One arrived in January 2006 and
Piano Vortex followed a year later.
4D, featuring
Shipp on solo piano, was released by Thirsty Ear early in 2010. It was one of several recordings from the pianist in the initial years of the 21st century, which included a two-disc solo piano recital entitled Creation Out of Nothing: Live in Moscow on the SoLyd Records imprint and the stellar trio set Night Logic, with
Joe Morris and former
Sun Ra saxophonist
Marshall Allen, on the Rogue Art label.
Shipp kept up the pace in 2011, kicking off the year with the double-CD offering
Art of the Improviser, which showcased him in two different live settings: one solo and one in a trio with bassist
Michael Bisio and drummer
Whit Dickey. In the spring he released a duet recording with alto saxophonist
Darius Jones titled
Cosmic Lieder on the AUM Fidelity label. In 2012, he re-formed the trio with
Bisio and
Dickey for
Elastic Aspects.
Shipp entered into a prolific collaboration with saxophonist
Ivo Perelman for a slew of projects that year, and 2013 included a duet, trios, and quartets with various personnel, all issued by Leo Records. Titles included
The Gift,
The Clairvoyant,
The Foreign Legion,
A Violent Dose of Anything,
Enigma,
The Art of the Duet, Vol. 1, The Edge, and Serendipity. In the fall of 2013,
Shipp released the solo piano offering
Piano Sutras for Thirsty Ear, as well as a retrospective for the label entitled Greatest Hits and a duet offering with saxophonist
John Butcher, Fataka 2.
Shipp maintained a prolific release and touring pace in 2014. First to appear was the trio date
The Roots of Things in February with
Dickey and
Bisio, followed by two more sets in various ensembles with
Perelman. The first, titled The Other Edge, was issued in March and featured the pianist's quartet backing the saxophonist, while the second, released the same month, was Book of Sound, a collaborative recording between
Perelman,
Shipp, and
Parker.
Symbol Systems, a solo piano outing, appeared in May from Lithuania's No Business label, while
The Darkseid Recital, a second chapter in
Jones' and
Shipp's "Cosmic Lieder," was released in August by AUM Fidelity, followed by the solo piano offering
I've Been to Many Places on Thirsty Ear in September. That year, the French Rogue Art label issued no less than four
Shipp-led dates compiled from several years of performances. They included the solo Piano (2008); a duet album with
Evan Parker titled Rex, Wrecks & XXX (2013); Right Hemisphere with
Brown,
Dickey and
Morris (2008); and Declared Enemy: Salute to the 100001 Stars: A Tribute to Jean Genet with
Parker,
Gerald Cleaver,
Sabir Mateen, and Denis Lavant (2006).
The following year saw two more releases from the label. Our Lady of the Flowers was a Genet tribute follow-up a decade on (sans Lavant), and the controversial but still widely celebrated trio recording To Duke.
Shipp also issued a pair of duet recordings: Live at Okuden: The Uppercut with Polish reed and woodwind master
Mat Walerian on ESP-Disk, and
Callas with
Perelman for Leo.
Associations with both men produced more 13 more recordings in 2016 and 2017.
Complementary Colors and Corpo were duo dates with
Perelman (the pair released 13 albums together before 2017 was out), while
Butterfly Whispers added
Dickey to make it a trio.
Live at Okuden: Jungle with
Walerian and
Hamid Drake, capturing a performance from 2012, was released by ESP-Disk. The pianist issued a trio date titled
Piano Song in early 2017, with
Michael Bisio on bass and drummer Newman Taylor Baker. Produced by Peter Gordon, it marked
Shipp's swan song as a recording artist for Thirsty Ear, though he remained curator of its Blue Series imprint. An ESP-Disk trio date with
Walerian and
Parker was issued as
Toxic: This Is Beautiful Because We Are Beautiful People during the late spring.
In early 2018,
Shipp released three albums. In January, Accelerated Projection, a duo date with
Roscoe Mitchell was issued by France's Rogue Art label. A month later,
Shipp released two dates through ESP-Disk simultaneously:
Sonic Fiction, a quartet date with
Walerian,
Bisio, and
Dickey, and the solo piano offering Zero in February. In late 2018, Rogue Art issued a duo reunion by
Shipp and
Maneri titled Conference of the Mat/ts. In 2019, the label released three more
Shipp titles: All Things Are, with
Bisio and Newman Taylor Baker, Symbolic Reality, with
Maneri and
William Parker, and What If?, a duo offering with trumpeter
Nate Wooley.
Though
Shipp was unable to tour during the COVID-19 pandemic, he saw the release of eight recent archival projects. These included the duo outing
Amalgam with
Perelman; Welcome Adventure, Vol. 1 with
Daniel Carter,
Cleaver, and
Parker, and two solo piano outings,
The Piano Equation, and the epic The Reward (Solo Piano Suite in Four Movements).
Okuden Quartet (
Walerian,
Hamid Drake,
Parker and
Shipp) released
Every Dog Has Its Day But It Doesn't Matter Because Fat Cat Is Getting Fatter.
2021 was just as busy. He returned to touring, and he and
Parker played on
Francisco Mela's Music Frees Our Souls, Vol. 1. He issued two duo outings for Rogue Art -- Leonine Aspects with
Evan Parker and Re-Union with
William Parker. For the same label, he,
Gerald Cleaver, and
Joe Morris appeared in
Paul Dunmall's quartet for The Bright Awakening. That July, he and
Dickey issued the duos project Reels. In October, the Aum Fidelity-affiliated Tao Forms issued
Village Mothership, a trio including
Dickey,
Shipp, and
Parker, and in November, a solo
Shipp put out
Codebreaker. The following year, he collaborated with saxophonist
Chad Fowler on the double-length, improvised duos set Old Stories for Mahakala Music. He also reprised his
577 Records collaboration with
Carter,
Parker, and
Cleaver on Welcome Adventure, Vol. 2. In June he released the double-length set
World Construct, his fifth offering for ESP-Disk, accompanied by bassist
Michael Bisio and drummer/percussionist Newman Taylor Baker. ~ Thom Jurek & Joslyn Lane