The Squid's Ear Magazine


Shipp, Matthew: The Piano Equation (Tao Forms)

The title referencing the discipline and often mathematical basis behind New York pianist Matthew Shipp's work, balanced by fascinating abstractions and a curious mind that drives Shipp's remarkable journeys in solo improvisation, these 11 pieces draw together fundamental elements of the jazz idiom and transform them into something intelligently complex and uniquely Shipp.
 

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Matthew Shipp-piano


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UPC: 642623800126

Label: Tao Forms
Catalog ID: TAO 001CD
Squidco Product Code: 29125

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2020
Country: USA
Packaging: Digipack
Recorded at Park West Studios, in Brooklyn, New York, by Jim Clouse.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"Further honing a singular cosmic musical language, Matthew Shipp begins celebrating his landmark 60th year with this new solo piano recording. The Piano Equation is also the inaugural release from Tao Forms, a new label founded by drummer-improviser-composer - and longtime Shipp collaborator - Whit Dickey.

Over more than half of his lifespan, Shipp has built up an unparalleled body of work and a wholly original musical language that only becomes more hyper-focused and distinctive with the passage of time. Shipp's abstract eloquence is on vivid display throughout The Piano Equation, which presents him alone at the piano, brilliantly solving his higher-order musical mathematics, approaching each new unknown from unexpected vantage points as in some form of cubist algebra. Shipp builds his solo music in a cellular fashion, formed like the building blocks of human life out of disparate elements that combine and evolve in novel and fascinating forms. "There are billions of different human beings on the planet, all constituted with the same genetic material but all completely different," he says. "All of these pieces can be generated with a different mother/father idea and the basic cellular material can unfold in billions of ways."

Stride, swing and the avant-garde collide like so many elemental particles, the aftereffects radiating outward in increasingly complex and intricate formations. The scientific, the personal, the political and the fantastic co-exist throughout Shipp's work, melding in the radical vocabulary that the pianist employs on the album, which speaks with its own alien yet familiar logic. Fragments of melody coalesce and transform, dissolve or shatter into kaleidoscopic reveries.

While some may have used the arrival of such a landmark occasion as their 60th anniversary of arrival here to look backwards, Shipp will spend the year continuing to move resolutely forward, further evolving a voice that is as intimately personal as it is cosmically adventurous."-Tao Forms


Artist Biographies

"Matthew Shipp was born December 7, 1960 in Wilmington, Delaware. He started piano at 5 years old with the regular piano lessons most kids have experienced. He fell in love with jazz at 12 years old. After moving to New York in 1984 he quickly became one of the leading lights in the New York jazz scene. He was a sideman in the David S. Ware quartet and also for Roscoe Mitchell's Note Factory before making the decision to concentrate on his own music.

Mr Shipp has reached the holy grail of jazz in that he possesses a unique style on his instrument that is all of his own- and he's one of the few in jazz that can say so. Mr. Shipp has recorded a lot of albums with many labels but his 2 most enduring relationships have been with two labels. In the 1990s he recorded a number of chamber jazz cds with Hatology, a group of cds that charted a new course for jazz that, to this day, the jazz world has not realized. In the 2000s Mr Shipp has been curator and director of the label Thirsty Ear's "Blue Series" and has also recorded for them. In this collection of recordings he has generated a whole body of work that is visionary, far reaching and many faceted."

-Matthew Shipp Website (http://www.matthewshipp.com/bio.html)
3/13/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.


Track Listing:



1. Piano Equation 5:14

2. Swing Note From Deep Space 4:59

3. Piano In Hyperspace 4:14

4. Vortex Factor 4:16

5. Land Of The Secrets 3:29

6. Void Equation 5:59

7. Tone Pocket 4:41

8. Clown Pulse 2:07

9. Radio Signals Equation 7:39

10. Emission 3:31

11. Cosmis Juice 4:49

Related Categories of Interest:


Improvised Music
Jazz
Free Improvisation
NY Downtown & Metropolitan Jazz/Improv
Piano & Keyboards
Solo Artist Recordings

Search for other titles on the label:
Tao Forms.


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