Those who keep up with the more avant-garde end of the jazz spectrum have long known that Matthew Shipp is one of the great pianists, but he's reached a higher level of creativity this decade, most recently displayed in his two releases this year, the new solo album I've Been to Many Places and the trio album The Root of Things.
Quick recap of how he got there: While growing up in Delaware, Shipp studied privately with Dennis Sandole, one of John Coltrane's teachers. Later, at New England Conservatory, Shipp studied with Joe Maneri, another avant-jazz great. Shipp's recording career began in 1988 with a duo album with saxophonist Rob Brown, and within a few years the pianist had joined the David S. Ware Quartet; he recorded with that group from 1990 until it disbanded in 2007, then increased his already prolific output by making over two dozen albums as leader or...
Quick recap of how he got there: While growing up in Delaware, Shipp studied privately with Dennis Sandole, one of John Coltrane's teachers. Later, at New England Conservatory, Shipp studied with Joe Maneri, another avant-jazz great. Shipp's recording career began in 1988 with a duo album with saxophonist Rob Brown, and within a few years the pianist had joined the David S. Ware Quartet; he recorded with that group from 1990 until it disbanded in 2007, then increased his already prolific output by making over two dozen albums as leader or...
- 10/4/2014
- by SteveHoltje
- www.culturecatch.com
Last year I started anointing a Jazz Artist of the Year after a spurt of six Ivo Perelman albums that would have dominated my best-of list if not set apart. I've done it again because once again there was an artist so prolific And so good that he was again worth noting separately. Though pianist Matthew Shipp only released one album as a leader in 2013, he was a prolific collaborator, especially with Perelman. And it has been many years since Shipp was a 'sideman'; he is an equal on these projects.
Taking well-deserved primacy here, of course, is his one new 2013 album under his own name (there was also Greatest Hits, reviewed by Dusty Wright here), though several of those listed below it are of equal quality.
Matthew Shipp: Piano Sutras (Thirsty Ear)
After my review of this great, great solo piano album was published, I worried that people might...
Taking well-deserved primacy here, of course, is his one new 2013 album under his own name (there was also Greatest Hits, reviewed by Dusty Wright here), though several of those listed below it are of equal quality.
Matthew Shipp: Piano Sutras (Thirsty Ear)
After my review of this great, great solo piano album was published, I worried that people might...
- 1/13/2014
- by SteveHoltje
- www.culturecatch.com
Leo Records was founded in 1979 by Leo Feigin, a Russian who had emigrated to England. Early in its history, back before the glasnost era, it was most noted for releasing avant-garde Russian jazz at a time when government authorities discouraged the style. As Alexander Alexandrov of Moscow Composers Orchestra says, "What the authorities really hated was free jazz and improvised music – for the reason we loved it, because it was a powerful symbol of individual freedom." Although somehow the Ganelin Trio's first album came out on the official Soviet record label, Melodiya, it was the group's many albums on Leo that earned both the band and Leo world-wide reputations.
Eventually Leo expanded enough that it even had offshoots: Leo Lab for new artists, Golden Years of New Jazz for vintage material. Especially notable from the latter are four superb four-cd sets comprising a series entitled Golden Years of the Soviet...
Eventually Leo expanded enough that it even had offshoots: Leo Lab for new artists, Golden Years of New Jazz for vintage material. Especially notable from the latter are four superb four-cd sets comprising a series entitled Golden Years of the Soviet...
- 1/19/2012
- by SteveHoltje
- www.culturecatch.com
In what seems like a summer of death, bracketed by homicide taking Michael Jackson and cancer killing Ted Kennedy and with Les Paul and Rashied Ali among the noted musicians passing, the loss of Joe Maneri has been overshadowed, unobserved by the mainstream. But for fans of avant-garde jazz, his death is a grievous loss and the termination of one of the most heartwarming stories in the annals of jazz. A virtuoso clarinetist and saxophonist with an acute ear for improvisation, Maneri saw his playing and composing career stall in the early Sixties, and instead became a professor at the New England Conservatory, noted for his encyclopedic knowledge of microtonal music.
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- 8/30/2009
- by SteveHoltje
- www.culturecatch.com
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