Matthew Shipp is, like my wife, turning 60 years old this year. My old lady might not appreciate my making that milestone public, but Shipp can mark that landmark birthday proudly looking back at an impressive body of work that has enriched jazz. “Impressive” can mean quantity or quality but in the case of this vital, modern-day figure of jazz piano, it means both.
Shipp records in a vast variety of configurations but solo piano and trio are his bread-and-butter formats, and the two albums he plans to release in 2020 feature each of these. The Piano Equation is that solo piano one. There are so many unaccompanied piano records from Shipp, it’s fair to wonder if it just gets redundant after a while. But they don’t, and he is one of the very few who gets away with this because he has something original to say each time out.
Shipp is one of the few pianists who can play chords in an unhurried manner and make it sound completely fresh and uncommon, and “The Piano Equation” illustrates how he does it; it’s largely in how he strings together those chords, how long to sustain each chord and in how he paces himself. It’s nothing about technical bedazzlement, it’s all in the much more about having good intuition and trusting it.
Elsewhere, songs are bursting with original ideas. “Void Equation” is a limber mingling of chords, single line notes and arpeggios all blurred together. “Tone Pocket” takes unpredictable turns from one chord to the next, but still follow a logical sequence, stopping in a spot of delicacy, like pausing to smell the roses. “Radio Signals Equations” has a middle section where Shipp leaps into a vamp, alternating between two or three chords and in another instance, he’s stepping down a scale like going downstairs into the basement. “Cosmic Juice” is a series of thunderous dramatics punctuated by moments of calm reflection.
As is typical with this piano master, he tips his hat to the masters before him but does it with his own signature. “Swing Note From Deep Space” keeps teasing Thelonious Monk but never goes completely there. Instead, Shipp goes down a path that is all his. “Clown Pulse” tantalizes suggestions of jazz in the tradition of both Monk and Powell but in the end remains iconoclastic. Shipp puts in all sorts of Ellingtonian flourishes in the lavish “Land of the Secrets” amidst a bevy of Shipp-ian ones.
“Piano In Hyperspace” feels like ultimate Matthew Shipp: contemplative and human, with chord patterns that suggest both classical and jazz but residing in its own space.
The Piano Equation is scheduled for release May 22, 2020, the inaugural release from Whit Dickey’s Tao Forms label.
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