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| 1. | Piano Vortex
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| 2. | Key Swing
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| 3. | The New Circumstance
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| 4. | Nooks and Corners
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| 5. | Sliding Through Space
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| 6. | Quivering with Speed
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| 7. | Slips Through the Fingers
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| 8. | To Vitalize
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Jazz
Matthew Shipp - Piano
Joe Morris - Bass
Whit Dickey - Drums
Keith Nelson - Engineer
Peter Gordon - Executive Producer
For those who view Matthew Shipp and his ever-restless body of work as too far outside the spectrum of their desirability because of its deep reliance of late on electronics, or in earlier years, on dissonance and free improvisation, Piano Vortex may come as a shock. Shipp, in collaboration with drummer Whit Dickey and bassist Joe Morris (he's not playing guitar this time out), sink their teeth into the notion of the piano trio as a prime vehicle for reconsidering the language of jazz. That's not to say that there aren't "free" pieces here, there are: "Sliding Through Space" is as outside as anything he's ever done, and the longish opening section of "The New Circumstance" and the frenetic yet brilliantly agile and intricately arrayed "Quivering with Speed" move that way as well, with the latter utilizing both Cecil Taylor and Bud Powell as rhythmic considerations as well as harmonic ones.
But there's something else being considered here, too. Shipp is reexamining his relationship to the piano trio, and "swing" in particular, as ways of getting at his own head-scratching ideas of harmonic and dialogic interplay. The tentative, even tender and mysterious beginning of the title cut that opens the album is a prime example. Beginning with a whisper of notes before Morris enters the dialogue, Shipp, finds his way in the middle and upper registers of the instrument, examining fragments of a melody that he begins to extrapolate upon before fully realizing it. He allows Morris and then Dickey to provide a ground of steady but non-insistent communication as he winds his way all around this minor-key idea before eventually turning his head to chromatics and color, taking the rhythm as a cue to begin to build on. The fragmental melodic idea gets spread out pretty wide but it never falls apart. He plays inside his own set of restrictions to engage the band percussively, with accents that fire first on ones and then on twos and threes, and his beautiful trills, 16th note runs, block chords, and scalar flourishes are beautiful little asides as the piece becomes more abstract in its middle stages before flying off into wild and sometimes purposely repetitive and lyrically elegant note patterns in varying dynamics.
The rhythm section flies to accommodate him, and on a dime they can shift that dynamic and stretch Shipp's melodic interplay even further. On other cuts, such as "Key Swing," Shipp directly engages the blues via equal parts Bobby Timmons, Thelonious Monk, and Ramsey Lewis "Nooks and Crannies" uses intricate scalar notions à la Lennie Tristano without moving directly into bebop. The patterns are knotty, elongated lines inside other lines and yes, both these tunes swing. The dialogue between Dickey and Morris is particularly gratifying here, because they move forward along a line that while not entirely straight, is circular and finds its way back as a landmark for Shipp, particularly on the latter number.
"To Vitalize" begins as a straight hard bop tune before becoming an elliptical mode of inquiry for Shipp and company. He follows Monk's ideas of ending lines in the middle and tagging on grainy harmonic bits that work in conjunction with the rhythm section while adding layers of melodic and textural material. Here, too, the move is one toward swing, and which does work because of the very pronounced rhythm section pacing of the pianist. He is free to move off-square, turn his chords inside out, and never stray far from the blues feel in the tune, even when those chords, made up of complex minor-key extrapolations, are chunky. His middle register solo in the middle of the tune is an elegant and subtle contrast. There is also a beautiful little solo piece just before the end, titled "Slips Through the Fingers," that is an investigation of the lower (and lower) middle registers of the keyboard. Here a small lyric fragment serves as a limited but very colorful and even graceful investigation of the melodies that lie inside chords, even as they are taken apart and reassembled. It doesn't feel at all self-indulgent, and merely sets the listener up for the aforementioned closer that is so dazzling and delightful. Piano Vortex is the most intimate recording Shipp has made in a long while. He looks back through the music's history and speaks with it, as it informs his own extension of it. This is an intimate and unvarnished look at Shipp as a jazz pianist as we've ever heard on record.
--- Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
Matthew Shipp
Active Decades: '70s, '80s, '90s and '00s
Born: Dec 07, 1960 in Wilmington, DE
Genre: Jazz
Styles: Modern Creative, Avant-Garde, Post-Bop, Modern Composition, Free Jazz, Avant-Garde Jazz, Free Improvisation
With his unique and recognizable style, pianist Matthew Shipp worked and recorded vigorously during the 1990s, creating music in which free jazz and modern classical intertwine. He first became known in the early '90s as the pianist in the David S. Ware Quartet, and soon began leading his own dates -- most often including Ware bandmate and leading bassist William Parker -- and recording a number of duets with a variety of musicians, from the legendary Roscoe Mitchell to violinist Mat Maneri, who began appearing on recordings in the 1990s. Through his range of live and recorded performances and unswerving individual development, Shipp came to be regarded as a prolific and respected voice in creative music by the decade's close.
Born in the 1960s and raised in Wilmington, DE, 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. Shipp played on 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 had an enthusiasm for a variety of studies 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 then 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, Silkheart, and more.
In 2000, Shipp began acting as curator for Thirsty Ear's Blue Series. This excellent series 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.
---Joslyn Layne, All Music Guide |
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