Matthew Shipp Continues 60th Birthday Celebration with New Trio Album with Bassist Michael Bisio & Drummer Newman Taylor Baker

Matthew Shipp Continues 60th Birthday Celebration with New Trio Album with Bassist Michael Bisio & Drummer Newman Taylor Baker

New recording builds on momentum of his recent solo record, The Piano Equation, which received universal critical acclaim from NY Times, New Yorker, The WIRE, New York Review of Books, PopMatters & More

The Unidentifiable is out September 18th via ESP-Disk'

Left to right: Newman Taylor Barker, Matthew Shipp, Michael Bisio

Photo: Anna Yatskevich

Down Beat 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 an “elder,” or so outspoken as “statesman,” yet Downbeat is right. Shipp turns 60 this December. When he speaks, people listen (the old E.F. Hutton commercials come to mind). Expanding further on this thought, AllAboutJazz.com says, "How that happened can be boiled down to two simple elements. One: he has created a unique sound and language for improvised music and two: Shipp has become a doyen of cutting edge music making and opinion."

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? Ahmad Jamal, Martial Solal, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, George Cables, Richie Beirach, Dave Burrell, Cooper-Moore, and come to mind among those still active. Jamal, Hancock, Corea and Cables are all "mainstream" for lack of a better word; Beirach more mainstream that he once was; Burrell and Cooper-Moore still mighty forces though not nearly as prolific in terms of recordings. All are older than Shipp, so he stands almost alone in his generation for his stylistic range and dedication to pushing forward the work of his forebears (aside from a few notable peers such as Myra Melford, Marilyn Crispell, Sylvie Courvoisier, Uri Caine, and Anthony Coleman). To look at it from a slightly different angle than Downbeat did, Shipp has established himself as the premier avant-garde jazz pianist of his generation.

As AllAboutJazz.com put it, “I like to think about Matthew Shipp’s music in the same light as that of Eric Dolphy and Charlie Parker. What I am getting at is there are giants that live amongst us. Let's not wait 40 years after they are gone to appreciate their talent. Shipp, like Thelonious Monk, has created a musical vocabulary and language that is idiosyncratic and incomparable in today's improvised jazz.”

Not that Shipp is 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. The Denver Post points out, “Even though Matthew Shipp has released dozens of albums under his own name in the past quarter century, they’re engaging every time out — and my personal favorite are his trios.”

Starting in the bebop era, the piano-bass-drums lineup has been the most important proving ground 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 – “Mr. Shipp’s predilection for finding fertile ground between accessibility and abstraction,” wrote Larry Blumenfeld in The Wall Street Journal.

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. My trio is a major part of my universe and creative life. Trio and solo make me who I am, which is why it feels so complete to have albums that show both parts of me this year. My trio brings in Mr. Bisio and Mr. Baker, two distinct and strong individuals who have a wealth of experience and joy in music-making. This is the fourth album with this particular trio.  It feels to me that there has been a straight evolution in the sound of the trio – in scope and in depth. I hope that comes across."

Shipp, Bisio, and Baker convened at Shipp's favorite recording studio last year, looking to pursue a new direction. The result is both distinctively Shippian yet a further evolution of the group’s sound.