He might be older and wiser, but Matthew Shipp has not mellowed with age.
A galvanizing force among the heirs to jazz's avant-garde movement of the 1960s, the pianist has spent the past quarter century building a vast, roiling musical universe. As an invaluable sideman and prolific bandleader, as a sometimes caustic advocate and discerning curator of Thirsty Ear Recordings' influential Blue Series documenting the work of similarly edgy musicians, he has done more than just about any other figure of his generation to uphold and advance a jazz aesthetic built upon free improvisation.
But that's not to say Shipp remains wedded to unchanging musical strategies. Listening to his recent double album, “Art of the Improviser” (Thirsty Ear), it's striking how much his approach has evolved as he explores various compositional forms and structures. With one disc documenting his trio and the other capturing a tumultuous solo recital, the album sums up his circuitous creative journey on the verge of his 50th birthday.
“My music has certainly changed over a long period of time,” says Shipp, who performs alone and also with resourceful Boston alto saxophonist Jim Hobbs at Outpost on Sunday. “When I moved to New York, I wanted to be a free improviser. Now I'm more concerned with creating material people can remember. The great thing about composition in jazz is that it's malleable. You can put fragments together with other elements and create new organizations.”
A galvanizing force among the heirs to jazz's avant-garde movement of the 1960s, the pianist has spent the past quarter century building a vast, roiling musical universe. As an invaluable sideman and prolific bandleader, as a sometimes caustic advocate and discerning curator of Thirsty Ear Recordings' influential Blue Series documenting the work of similarly edgy musicians, he has done more than just about any other figure of his generation to uphold and advance a jazz aesthetic built upon free improvisation.
But that's not to say Shipp remains wedded to unchanging musical strategies. Listening to his recent double album, “Art of the Improviser” (Thirsty Ear), it's striking how much his approach has evolved as he explores various compositional forms and structures. With one disc documenting his trio and the other capturing a tumultuous solo recital, the album sums up his circuitous creative journey on the verge of his 50th birthday.
“My music has certainly changed over a long period of time,” says Shipp, who performs alone and also with resourceful Boston alto saxophonist Jim Hobbs at Outpost on Sunday. “When I moved to New York, I wanted to be a free improviser. Now I'm more concerned with creating material people can remember. The great thing about composition in jazz is that it's malleable. You can put fragments together with other elements and create new organizations.”
