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April 2008
gig reviews

Seb Pipe's Life Experience
Trio VD / Final Terror
The Frank Griffith Nonet
Matthew Shipp Trio
Paolo Angeli, Evan Parker
Barbez
Christine Tobin
The Zig Quartet

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April 2008 gig reviews by Chris Parker

Matthew Shipp Trio

Monday 21 April

 

Considering the problems they had getting through immigration at Heathrow earlier in the day (passports Æ and cymbals, bizarrely Æ confiscated), pianist Matthew Shipp, bassist Joe Morris and drummer Whit Dickey presented a remarkably composed (in the emotional sense, at least) appearance when they took the stage in front of a full house.

Shipp is celebrated (in Richard Cook's Jazz Encyclopedia) as 'a prolific and imposing presence in the jazz of the new century', his 'playing of inscrutable intensity' informed by an 'interest in contrasting structures and tremendously dense voicings'.

These latter two interests were what immediately impressed on this occasion, Shipp Æ bent low over the piano as if conjuring up its spirit from the depths Æ producing a continuous flow of music, incorporating occasional thematic snatches and repeated riffs but generally going where spontaneous inspiration led him, ideas pouring out of his fingers in a cascade, alternately gentle and torrential, but consistently intense and vituosic.

Whit Dickey (who appeared on some of Shipp's early-1990s recordings alongside William Parker) and Joe Morris were subtly propulsive throughout Æ Dickey is, for UK free listeners, more of a Tony Marsh than a Tony Levin Æ and overall, this was an impressive display of delicately powerful interactive free trio music.

 

 

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