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CD
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ESPDISK 5085CD
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This group evolves in leaps and bounds. You've never heard a jazz piano trio sound like this album -- not even this band on its previous album, the much-praised World Construct. That said, there is a through line from the first Matthew Shipp Trio album, 1990's Circular Temple (ESPDISK 4082CD, 2023 reissue) to New Concepts in Piano Trio Jazz. Says Shipp, "Yes, we went there with that type of title this time. To anyone who thought the trio had reached its apotheosis on World Construct, you are in for a surprise -- this is light years ahead of World Construct. Of course each CD is its own world and valuable for that, but I am in complete and utter shock at what I am listening to. New Concepts in Piano Trio Jazz sounds completely thoroughly composed and yet completely spontaneously improvised at the same time. This is a major album in jazz history. Newman Taylor Baker is one of the most profound percussionists ever. Michael Bisio sounds like God's angel on this album. He has dedicated himself to working in my vision for years now and I think this might be the ultimate of how we can read each other and hook up. This is one of the greatest trio albums ever. While creating a whole new cosmos we manage to escape every cliché that exists in jazz and in avant jazz. This really might be the last trio CD because it really cannot get better than this."
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ESPDISK 4082CD
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It has become clear that Matthew Shipp is the most interesting and important jazz pianist of his generation, the most continually evolving and pushing forward. Now that he's in his sixties and something of an elder statesman of the art form, he's overdue for a retrospective look at his catalog, and to help make that happen, ESP-Disk' will be reissuing some of his great early work that's gone out of print. The 1990 trio recording Circular Temple (originally self-released on Quinton, then reissued in 1994 by Henry Rollins on his Infinite Zero label) is now reissued in 2023. Circular Temple has marked many firsts for Matthew Shipp: his first CD release, first piano trio album, first of many times on record with Parker and Dickey, first album to be reissued, and on ESP-Disk's reissue of it, first CD-only album to finally appear on vinyl and first album to be released by three different labels. And, more trivially, the first Shipp album that current ESP head/reissue producer Steve Holtje acquired, back when the only choices were that and a 1988 LP-only duo by Shipp and saxophonist Rob Brown on the Cadence label.
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ESPDISK 4082LP
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LP version. It has become clear that Matthew Shipp is the most interesting and important jazz pianist of his generation, the most continually evolving and pushing forward. Now that he's in his sixties and something of an elder statesman of the art form, he's overdue for a retrospective look at his catalog, and to help make that happen, ESP-Disk' will be reissuing some of his great early work that's gone out of print. The 1990 trio recording Circular Temple (originally self-released on Quinton, then reissued in 1994 by Henry Rollins on his Infinite Zero label) is now reissued in 2023. Circular Temple has marked many firsts for Matthew Shipp: his first CD release, first piano trio album, first of many times on record with Parker and Dickey, first album to be reissued, and on ESP-Disk's reissue of it, first CD-only album to finally appear on vinyl and first album to be released by three different labels. And, more trivially, the first Shipp album that current ESP head/reissue producer Steve Holtje acquired, back when the only choices were that and a 1988 LP-only duo by Shipp and saxophonist Rob Brown on the Cadence label.
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ESPDISK 5059CD
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Matthew Shipp's new album is titled World Construct. It's a fitting title, for in his career of over three decades, he has constructed his own world of jazz. This press release could be entirely built from the raves of critics. "As Matthew Shipp's catalog expands, so does our understanding of the depth and breadth of his genius." "A gateway to higher improvisation that is practically without parallel. Matthew Shipp is the connection between that past, present and future for jazzheads of all ages." He "has produced a recording of great beauty and logic, creating distinct performances that are simultaneously shocking and beautiful, equally classic and daring. Shipp has been able to create pieces out of thin air that seem utterly worthy of composition. The music seems to be pulled directly from the realm where mathematics and magic collide. What Matthew Shipp has done is a profound achievement." "Unleashed with the kind of power imparted to them by his supple fingers, these notes and this music becomes something living and breathing, dancers indeed. Each title is seemingly a trigger which causes the hands and fingers of the pianist to leap and fly, and defy gravity not only with notes that ascend, light as air, as if to a rarefied realm. This is clearly the creation of a major composer whose pianism also suggests great cohesion of form and function, and above all, lyricism that sets Mr. Shipp apart in the same way that it did for musicians such as Thelonious Monk and Cecil Taylor." "Matthew Shipp confirms he is one of the best pianists of his generation. A monumental work that befits a place of choice in the jazz piano pantheon." You won't want to miss World Construct, recorded during the pandemic with his trio of five years. It will soon be seen as an important piece of the jazz edifice that is Mr. Shipp's magnificent career. Personnel: Matthew Shipp - piano; Michael Bisio - bass; Newman Taylor Baker -drums. Recorded by Jim Clouse 4/15/2021 at Park West Studios, Brooklyn NY. Cover art by Yuko Otomo.
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ESPDISK 5039CD
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Downbeat calls Matthew Shipp "an elder statesman on the free-jazz scene." Perhaps it is odd in a way to think of someone so energetic and prolific as "elder," or so outspoken as "statesman," yet Downbeat (Bill Milkowski) is right. Shipp turns 60 this December. When he speaks, people listen (the old E.F. Hutton commercials come to mind). With Andrew Hill, Mal Waldron, Cecil Taylor, Horace Tapscott, Randy Weston, and McCoy Tyner now gone, who are the elder jazz piano giants now living? Dave Burrell, Cooper-Moore, Richie Beirach, and Martial Solal come to mind among those still active. Solal is mainstream; Beirach more mainstream now than free though he's been on the edge at times; Burrell and Cooper-Moore still mighty forces as Vision Festival concerts in recent years have shown, but neither especially prolific in terms of recordings. All of them older than Shipp, so he stands alone in his generation. To look at it from a slightly different angle than Downbeat did, Matthew Shipp has established himself as the premier avant-garde jazz pianist of his generation. Shipp is not willing to be put in a stylistic box. And nowhere is that more apparent than in his trio with bassist Michael Bisio and drummer Newman Taylor Baker. Starting in the bebop era, the piano-bass-drums lineup has been the most classic jazz format in which the piano is featured, accumulating the weight of history and critical expectations. In this setting, a non-mainstream player such as Shipp can infiltrate Newport Jazz Festival, Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and other Establishment bastions in a familiar format and then unleash his ideas on audiences that might not normally be exposed to his style. Thanks to hearing it in the communal language of the piano trio, they can better understand the message the Matthew Shipp Trio has to deliver. Shipp, Bisio, and Baker convened at Shipp's favorite recording venue last year looking to pursue a new direction. The result is both distinctively Shippian yet a further evolution of the group's sound. Personnel: Matthew Shipp - piano; Michael Bisio - bass; Newman Taylor Baker - drums. Recorded October 10, 2019 at Park West Studios in Brooklyn, NY by Jim Clouse. Produced by Steve Holtje.
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ESPDISK 5029CD
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Matthew Shipp has established himself as the premier jazz pianist of his generation over the course of a three-decade career including many acclaimed albums under his own name plus his prominent tenure in the David S. Ware Quartet and a vast array of collaborations with the likes of Spring Heel Jack, Ivo Perelman, Sabir Mateen, Darius Jones, Joe Morris, Jemeel Moondoc, Mat Walerian, and many more. ESP-Disk' in its four-years-and-counting association with him has already presented Shipp in solo, duo, trio, and quartet projects. On the album Signature, ESP-Disk' will finally have an album with him in his primary setting, his piano trio with bassist Michael Bisio and drummer Newman Taylor Baker. Mr. Shipp says, "The piano trio is such a basic configuration in jazz, and it is an honor to take a well-explored area and apply my imagination to it to see where we can go -- it helps that my trio mates are great." Starting in the bebop era, the piano-bass-drums lineup has been the most classic jazz format in which the piano is featured, accumulating the weight of history and critical expectations. In this setting, a non-mainstream player such as Shipp can infiltrate Newport Jazz Festival, Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and other establishment bastions in a familiar format and then unleash his ideas on audiences that might not normally be exposed to his style, but thanks to hearing it in the communal language of the piano trio, they can better understand the message the Matthew Shipp Trio has to deliver. Shipp, Bisio, and Baker convened at Shipp's favorite recording venue, engineer Jim Clouse's Park West Studio, on July 9th, 2018 and laid down the album in a series of first takes. It is a worthy successor both to the group's much-praised previous releases and to the iconic piano trios throughout jazz history. Produced by Steve Holtje. Engineered by Jim Clouse. Personnel: Matthew Shipp - piano; Michael Bisio - bass; Newman Taylor Baker - drums.
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HAT 549
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"There's the same very fast transference of signals. There's the very complex type of pattern action. There's the same mixture of improvisations and discipline. But the unknown is being unfolded at really fast rates. Which certainly holds true for this no-nonsense, cinema verite-live set from New York's Roulette performance space, recorded in March 1993. Matthew Shipp (piano); William Parker (double bass); and Whit Dickey (drums)." Previously issued by Brinkmann Records. Produced by Johan Kugelberg. From Peter Niklas Wilson's liner notes "...the most remarkable thing about Shipp's singular style is not his achievement of having developed an own voice in freely improvised piano playing next to the large-than-life presence of Mr. C.T., but his uncanny ability to recognize the improvisational potential of the pianistic textures and the melodic and harmonic vocabulary of early 20th century composer-performers such as Scriabin and Bartók (most pianists have opted for Chopin and Debussy, or, if more sympathetic to the avantgarde, Schönberg and Webern). The ambidextrous patterns and harmonically ambiguous chords Shipp uses as starting points of his extended improvisational explorations could have been lifted straight out of some European piano scores from, say, 1920, whereas Taylor's vocabulary has grown into a bold synthesis of abstracted blues motifs and high-velocity small-bandwidth clusters. The unmistakably 'unjazzy' source of many of Shipp's improvisations might lead some self-professed jazz guardians to question the pianist's jazz credentials: swing and blues, whither art thou? An accusation to which Shipp has replied: 'I'm not interested in fitting some moron definition of what jazz is.'"
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