Matthew Shipp
New York, NY
Grant amount: $13,250
Performances
Charlottesville Jazz Society/First Presbyterian Church. Charlottesville, VA. 10/16/2021
An die Musik LIVE!. Baltimore, MD. 10/17/2021
New Ghosts/Bop Stop. Cleveland, OH. 10/19/2021
FMRL/Chris Davis @ Darkhorse Theater. Nashville, TN. 10/21/2021
Edgefest/Kerrytown Concert House. Ann Arbor, MI. 10/28/2021
Arts for Art/Flamboyan Theater. New York, NY. 10/31/2021
About the Artist
With his unique and recognizable style, pianist Matthew Shipp has worked and recorded vigorously from the late '80s onward, creating music in which free jazz and modern classical is intertwined. His artistic breakthrough came in the early '90s as the pianist in the David S. Ware Quartet, and he soon began leading his own dates (most often including Ware bandmate and preeminent bassist William Parker) as well as recording duets with a variety of musicians, from the legendary Roscoe Mitchell to violinist Mat Maneri. Through his range of live, prolific body of recorded performances and work, and unswerving individual development, Shipp has come to be regarded as a respected innovator in creative music into the new millennium.
Born in 1960 and raised in Wilmington, Delaware, he began playing piano at the young age of five, and decided to focus on jazz by the time he was 12. Shipp moved to New York in 1984 and has been very active since the early 1990s, appearing on dozens of albums as a leader, sideman, or producer. He was initially most active in free jazz but has since branched out, particularly exploring music that touches on contemporary classical, hip hop, and electronica. At the beginning of his career Shipp was stylistically compared to some of his predecessors in the jazz piano pantheon but has since been recognized as a complete stylistic innovator on the piano – with AllMusic referring to his "unique and recognizable style"; and Larry Blumenfeld in Jazziz magazine referring to Shipp as "stunning in originality." Jazziz also referred to Shipp's CD 4D as "further proof of his idiosyncratic genius."
Shipp was a longtime member of saxophonist David S. Ware's quartet with bassist William Parker and alternating drummers. He has recorded or performed with many other musicians, including High Priest and Beans of Antipop Consortium, Michael Bisio, Guillermo E. Brown, Daniel Carter, Whit Dickey, Newman Taylor Baker, DJ Spooky, El-P, Susie Ibarra, Mat Maneri, Roscoe Mitchell, Joe Morris, Ivo Perelman, and Mat Walerian. In February 2011, Shipp released a double-disc album entitled Art of the Improviser. This release is "testament to Shipp's achievements, yet it is also a continuation of the discovery in his developmental musical language." The Chicago Tribune called the project "monumental" and "galvanic as ever."
Shipp's disccography is extensive. On September 24, 2013, Thirsty Ear Records released a solo piano CD by Shipp called Piano Sutras. Will Layman, writing for PopMatters, described it as: "the kind of record we talk about and play for each other decades later... This is music that frames up a whole history: of an artist, of listeners, of the artists who formed the history of the art form, of the culture and time that allowed this art to flourish."
Early on, Shipp was compared to his predecessors in the jazz piano pantheon but has since been recognized as a complete stylistic innovator on the piano – with AllMusic referring to his "unique and recognizable style"; and Larry Blumenfeld in Jazziz magazine referring to Shipp as "stunning in originality." Jazziz also referred to Shipp's CD 4D as "further proof of his idiosyncratic genuis."