The work of every great artist warrants a retrospective now and again. It is time for pianist Matthew Shipp to be given one; it
is called Matthew Shipp: Greatest Hits.
The recording is a well-designed shuffle of twelve years of recording; each piece
has been carefully chosen and juxtaposed one to another, without adhering to
chronological order.
Shipp’s character blends rumbling rambunctiousness with sheer
stamina, pure grace and a shy respectfulness. There is not one cut on this
record which can be dismissed as an aspect of the development of Shipp’s own
canonical language. Through two years
before and including the decade between ages forty and fifty, his musical
language changed markedly. At first, heavy and irrevocably repetitive, his
fingering opens up and he leaves behind his reliance on dark, resonant base
chords and, in a breathless, gorgeous grasp of rhythmic vicissitudes, bursts
into discovering the effusive breadth of the line he can follow without ever
having to draw it beforehand. The challenges he meets allow him to revisit and reassess
his piano heritage ranging from Thelonious Monk to Bud Powell to Ran Blake. He
never sacrifices what he has learned and appreciated. He blossoms more
thoroughly with each note he plays.
Two solos records, One
and 4-D, are quoted. In “Module,” from his first solo record, Shipp
dives into the river that is the eight-keys and, within that, maps out the
intimate streams and rivulets constituting the whole. And in the title track
from 4-D, Shipp lifts many
boundaries. In his fingering progressions, he shifts from one level to another painting
a picture of surface which emanates light through the shadows.
The earliest of Shipp’s groups documented here is the
quartet of 2000, featuring Roy Campbell on trumpet, along with William Parker
and Gerald Cleaver on drums. The stark contrast of the fanfare trumpet playing
of Campbell with that of Wadada Leo Smith in the tunefully melancholic title
cut of the 2001 New Orbit
demonstrates Shipp’s focus on establishing a solid sound against varying melodic
components.
On the other hand, in 2003, on Equilibrium, Khan Jamal plays vibes and Flam cooks electronic fixings.
Flam also appears in 2004’s Harmonic
Abyss with Parker and Cleaver and
Nu-bop from 2002. In the latter, Guillermo Brown is the drummer and Daniel
Carter extends the ultra-rhythm vibe with sax and flute sound, rarely included
in Shipp’s entourage. The three contributions from these records require high
volume for the appreciation of the groove that William Parker once said caught
him traveling in space, not knowing where he was going.
The serious dive into the trio setting starts out with Joe
Morris on bass and Whit Dickey on drums. Their Harmonic Disorder and Piano
Vortex caught the attention of a wide audience. Shipp was interested in
narrowing the number of components with which he could build his vision. His
concern with rhythmic content never evades him but the aspect of thematic
concerns pervades his exploration. He carried the tune aspect from his solo
efforts throughout his work with the trio, sometimes repeating them
specifically, e.g. Patmos. The themes he composed are not easily let go through
the march of improvisation, which is the process that this group brilliantly mastered
together. Consistent with the intense side of Shipp, Morris is mostly an
abstract bass player, leaning towards detailed microtones struck between and
around the notes that Shipp plays. Dickey is a consummate drummer, who always
stays on this side of explosion, cultivating those ever pregnant moments with
whispering cymbals and occasional snaps of the snare.
With 2012’s Elastic
Aspects, which is quoted twice on Greatest
Hits, Shipp opens the door to another kind of musical heaven. Dickey
remains as the drummer, but Michael Bisio takes over the bass. With Bisio, the “seasoning”
changes; his heft, ebullience and consistent rhythmic insinuation pulls all
the trio’s elements together and manages to create less of an angular package
than the one presented in the first trio.
“Circular Temple #1,” from 2011’s The Art of the Improviser, the only live recording in the bunch,
ends the collection in this "look-back" at Shipp's last twelve years with Thirsty
Ear. The music in this selection
stresses the communion of forces. Spiritually motivated and inspired, Shipp
often takes to the inside of the piano and plucks the strings as if they are
the tips of angel’s wings. His fingering on the keyboard thereafter takes flight and he goes
higher and deeper into the essence of his playing. Drummer Dickey and bassist Bisio
undercoat the piano sound smoothly. And
the close is abrupt, as if the music goes on, but is no longer audible.
Listening to Greatest Hits,
one hears the fairly obvious differences from group to group and from cut to
cut. But what one also hears is how Shipp has penetrated new ground over time, ever-expanding,
ever-shifting his musical ideas to address the cosmic nature of his music’s existence.
He has catapulted it into the realms of a radiant infinity.
