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"New York's fiery new-generation champ of the ivories"— Peter Aaron, Chronogram
"Matthew Shipp remains uncategorizable. He and his collaborators work almost entirely spontaneously, without written compositions, but his recordings also seem increasingly well-structured and beautiful. This trio, with bassist Michael Bisio and Newman Taylor Baker on drums, has been working together for some time, so their collective language is highly coordinated. They are fluent in quickly discovering a vibe, tonal center, and focus, even when there is no written theme. But this collection is exceptionally telepathic, even by Shipp’s elevated standards."
— Will Layman, PopMatters, reviewing Matthew Shipp Trio's new recording, New Concepts in Piano Trio Jazz
"For the last three decades and change, over dozens of recordings, (Matthew Shipp) the avant-garde pillar and Downtown New York City lifer has ripped up, deconstructed and reinvented the jazz blueprint with forward-looking abandon. Whether leading his deep-thinking yet freewheeling trio of bassist Michael Bisio and drummer Newman Taylor Baker, delving into his shapeshifting solo piano work or partaking in collaborative and sideman gigs, Shipp creates inside his own indelible genre."
— Brad Cohan, Tidal Magazine
"Matthew Shipp and his work have fascinated me since I first heard him many years ago. His originality and approach sometimes stretches the limits of what is considered jazz music yet at the same time, describes perfectly the fierce freedom of it. ... Matthew is not only a brilliant jazz pianist, he is a true artist and visionary."
— Henry Rollins
Elysium Furnace Works is proud to present the return to Beacon, NY by one of the world's most tirelessly creative, radically inspired and innovative pianists, leading one of the most celebrated piano trios of the modern era: the Matthew Shipp Trio. Featuring the extraordinary rhythm section of Hudson Valley-based bassist Michael Bisio and drummer Newman Taylor Baker, the Matthew Shipp Trio will perform on Saturday, July 13, appearing once more at St. Andrew's and St. Luke's Church where the group last performed in 2016. The MST performs in support of their acclaimed new recording, New Concepts in Piano Trio Jazz, released by the legendary ESP-Disk' record label.
Tickets are $20 in advance and $30 at the door — advance tickets are on sale at https://mstrio.eventbrite.com/ (please note: advance sales end at midnight the night before the concert).
EFW's momentous 2024 season will also include:
September 21: Peter Evans, VBI @ CHAC — the fearsomely gifted trumpeter Evans astonishes with the sheer multiplicity of sounds and textures he is able to coax from his horn and the staggering inspiration that shapes his fathomless exploration in this rare Hudson Valley solo appearance. Advance tickets on sale now at: https://peterevans.eventbrite.com/
October 12: Yuko Otomo, VBI @ CHAC — in her first solo Hudson Valley appearance, the exceptional poet and writer Otomo brings her revelatory work steeped in humane soul and omniversal epiphany, accompanied by musicians TBA. Advance tickets on sale now at: https://otomo.eventbrite.com/ (please note new date for this event)
November 16: AM / FM, VBI @ CHAC — this power duo of guitarist Ava Mendoza and violinist Gabby Fluke-Mogul synthesize a heady brew of avant jazz, blues and noise, radically upending experimental music(s) past, present, and future. Advance tickets on sale now at: https://amfm.eventbrite.com/
December 7: Harriet Tubman (Ross / Gibbs / Lewis), VBI @ CHAC — EFW closes out our monumental season with the fiery intensity of the long-running eclectic, electric collective Harriet Tubman, comprising the insanely talented, accomplished trio of guitarist Brandon Ross, bassist Melvin Gibbs and drummer JT Lewis, rounding out 2024 on a monstrously high, heavy note. Advance tickets on sale now at: https://harriettubman.eventbrite.com/
Biographies of the member of the Matthew Shipp Trio follow below.
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Matthew Shipp is an American jazz pianist, composer, and bandleader. Shipp was raised in Wilmington, Delaware. His mother was a friend of trumpeter Clifford Brown. He began playing piano at five years old. Shipp was strongly attracted to jazz, but also played in rock groups while in high school.
Shipp attended the University of Delaware for "a couple years" before dropping out. He opted instead to live with his parents and focus on practicing, though he frequently traveled to Philadelphia to pick up gigs as a cocktail pianist and to study with Dennis Sandole, who Shipp has cited as playing an important role in his development.
He later spent a year at the New England Conservatory of Music, where he studied with saxophonist and composer Joe Maneri, but again dropped out without completing a degree.
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. (Before making a living playing music, Shipp worked in a bookshop as an assistant manager. He was fired, he threw some books at his boss, and he decided he would not look for a day job anymore.)
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. Earlier in his career Shipp was 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, instantly recognizable style", and Larry Blumenfeld in Jazziz magazine referring to Shipp as "stunning in originality" and to his album 4D as "further proof of his idiosyncratic genius".
Shipp has also been celebrated by a wide range of artists: David Bowie has praised his work (specifically "Rocket Shipp" from the album Nu Bop), and Thurston Moore, who first saw him perform in 1990, has complimented his cross-genre appeal: "I see the same people showing up for Matthew's gigs as for Merzbow". (As a member of the David S. Ware Quartet, Shipp has opened for Sonic Youth.) Shipp has also been noted for his association with punk-rock icon Henry Rollins, who released several of Shipp's records on his 213 imprint. In 2010, Rollins wrote, "Matthew Shipp and his work have fascinated me since I first heard him many years ago. His originality and approach sometimes stretches the limits of what is considered Jazz music yet at the same time, describes perfectly the fierce freedom of it. ... Matthew is not only a brilliant Jazz pianist, he is a true artist and visionary." In the early 1990s Shipp also befriended Chan Marshall (aka Cat Power), then his next-door neighbor.
One of the first people Shipp sought out upon arriving in New York was William Parker, who he knew from his recordings with Cecil Taylor; Parker later recommended him for saxophonist David S. Ware's quartet, alongside Parker himself and a series of drummers (Marc Edwards, Susie Ibarra, Guillermo E. Brown, Whit Dickey). As a member of Ware's quartet, Shipp recorded albums for Homestead (Cryptology and DAO), Thirsty Ear (Threads, Live in the World, BalladWare), AUM Fidelity (the label's first release, Wisdom of Uncertainty, as well as Corridors & Parallels, Freedom Suite, and Renunciation), Silkheart (Great Bliss, Vol. 1 Great Bliss, Vol. 2, Oblations and Blessings), Columbia (Go See the World, Surrendered), and DIW (Flight of I, Third Ear Recitation, Earthquation, Godspelized).
In addition, the rhythm section of Shipp, Parker, and Brown recorded Ware compositions without Ware in 2003, released by Splasc(H) Records as The Trio Plays Ware, and Shipp and Ware performed as a duo, recorded in concert and released by AUM Fidelity as Live in Sant'Anna Arresi, 2004. In 2001, Gary Giddens wrote for The Village Voice that "The David S. Ware Quartet is the best small band in jazz today". After Ware's death, Shipp wrote, "Some have compared our unit to the classic Coltrane quartet, but the members of our group all brought something to the table that only someone playing now could bring—resulting in a gestalt that is of its time and does not look back. When free jazz seemed like a spent force, he brought something new—and greatly beautiful—to it."
Shipp was also a member of Roscoe Mitchell's Note Factory, which Shipp said "could be seen as an extension of some post-Coltrane concepts, but in Roscoe's hands it is extended technique with multiple pulses", noting "Mitchell's insistence at all times of transcending cliché".
Shipp has recorded or performed with many other musicians, including High Priest and Beans of Antipop Consortium, Michael Bisio, Daniel Carter, DJ Spooky, El-P, Mat Maneri, Joe Morris, Ivo Perelman, Mat Walerian, Allen Lowe, and Chad Fowler. He has also co-led the group East Axis, with bassist Kevin Ray, drummer Gerald Cleaver, and saxophonists Allen Lowe (first album) and Scott Robinson (second album).
The New York Times has noted Shipp's curatorial work for Thirsty Ear Records as "one of the label's chief consultants and most prolific artists". Shipp's own releases on the label include 2011's double-disc album, entitled Art of the Improviser; AllMusic called the work a "testament to Shipp's achievements, yet it is also a continuation of the discovery in his developmental musical language" and the Chicago Tribune called the project "monumental" and "galvanic as ever". Thirsty Ear also released Shipp's 2013 solo record Piano Sutras, which PopMatters described as "the kind of record we talk about and play for each other decades later ... 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". This was followed by 2015's The Conduct of Jazz, the first album by Shipp's trio with bassist Michael Bisio and drummer Newman Taylor Baker.
Shipp's work with the France-based RogueArt imprint began with the 2006 album Salute to 100001 Stars: A Tribute to Jean Genet by the group Declared Enemy (Sabir Mateen, Shipp, William Parker, and Gerald Cleaver). From 2006 to 2013, Shipp appeared on five albums released through RogueArt, one of which (Un Piano) billed Shipp as leader; from 2015 to 2022, the label put out six more albums with Shipp as leader, and another nine on which he was co-billed with, among others, Mark Helias, Nate Wooley, William Parker, Mat Maneri, John Butcher, and Evan Parker.
Shipp began working with ESP-Disk with the Shipp/Mat Walerian duo album Live at Okuden, billed as The Uppercut. Issued in 2015, it was the last new release approved by ESP-Disk's founder Bernard Stollman. All four of Walerian's albums with Shipp have been released on ESP-Disk’. Shipp's first ESP albums as leader were a quartet album, Sonic Fiction, and a solo album, Zer0, both issued in 2018. After that, he released several albums by his trio with Michael Bisio and Newman Taylor Baker: Signature, The Unidentifiable, and World Construct. The latter was called "a career-defining album" and awarded five stars by critic Mike Hobart in the Financial Times. In 2022 a duo album by Shipp and Ivo Perelman, Fruition, was released by ESP, with NPR's Nate Chinen stating in his review, "The freeform alchemy between Brazilian saxophonist Ivo Perelman and American pianist Matthew Shipp is by now a proven fact: rarely do two musicians achieve a higher flow state in real time."
In 2020, Longtime Shipp collaborator Whit Dickey started a label called Tao Forms; as of January 2023, the label had released two Shipp albums, The Piano Equation and Codebreaker, both solo releases, and four further albums on which he collaborates.
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Michael Bisio is an American jazz double bassist, composer, and bandleader. He is the bassist for the Matthew Shipp Trio with over 100 recordings to his credit. His first international release, In Seattle (Silkheart), was chosen as one of the “Best Jazz Records of the 1980s” in The Village Voice, which he followed with Connections (CIMP) in 2005. In 2010 he released Session at 475 Kent (Mutable Music) with Connie Crothers. 2011 releases include Bisio’s first solo effort Travel Music (MJB) and the Matthew Shipp Trio recording, Art of the Improviser (Thirsty Ear). Floating Ice (Relative Pitch) duets with Matthew was released in 2012, followed in 2014 by Root of Things (Relative Pitch) and To Duke (Rogue Art). 2015 recordings include The Gospel according to Matthew and Michael (Relative Pitch) and Michael Bisio Accortet (Relative Pitch). 2016 saw the release of Row for William O. (Relative Pitch), duets with Kirk Knuffke.
Seminal studies in creative music processes were with Bill (William O.) Smith and Stuart Dempster. Early tenure with trumpeter Barbara Donald and saxophonist Carter Jefferson left an indelible mark on Bisio’s music and spirit. Another major influence is Joe McPhee; he and Joe have created a body of work that includes two duo CDs, Finger Wigglers and Zebulon (CIMP), in addition to more than a dozen other releases including Port of Saints (CJR), Joe Giardullo’s Shadow and Light (Drimala), and Angels, Devils & Haints, Joe McPhee and the World Bass Quartet (CJR).
Other artist collaborations include Wayne Horvitz, Charles Gayle, Bob Nell, Sunny Murray, Louie Belogenis, John Tchai, Pauline Oliveros, Vinny Golia, Julian Priester, Eyvind Kang, Diedre Murray, Rashied Ali, Jim Nolet, Saadet Turkoz, Dominic Duval, Tomas Ulrich, Oluyemi Thomas, Matthew Shipp, Karl Berger, Warren Smith, Connie Crothers, Sonny Simmons, Jay Rosen, Avram Fefer, and Stephen Gauci.
As a composer Bisio has been recognized with nine project grants from various arts organizations; in 2003, he was awarded an Artist Trust Fellowship. He has been an instructor at Bennington College since 2009.
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Newman Taylor Baker is a jazz drummer and a washboard player. Newman Taylor Baker's paternal grandfather, Thomas Nelson Baker Sr., was the only former slave to receive a PhD from Yale University (1906).
Baker has performed internationally with Joe Henderson, McCoy Tyner, Kenny Barron, Henry Grimes, John Hicks, Kevin Eubanks, Ahmad Jamal, Yvette Glover, Tom Harrell, James Moody, Lou Donaldson, Gloria Lynne, Frank Morgan, Cecil Bridgewater, Benny Powell, Stanley Cowell, John Blake, Jymie Merritt, Frode Gjerstad, Marilyn Crispell, Bobby Bradford, Leroy Jenkins, Myra Melford, Eileen Fulton, Billy Harper Quintet, Henry Threadgill Sextett, Billy Bang Quintet, Francesca Tanksley Trio, Reggie Workman's Topshelf, Sam Rivers Quartet, Charlie Rouse's Cinnamon Flower, Diedre Murray and Fred Hopkins, Gerry Eastman Quartet, Jeanne Lee Quartet, Craig Harris and Tailgator's Tales, Bern Nix, Bobby Zankel, Abdullah Ibrahim and Ekaya, Ebony Hillbillies, and the Monnette Sudler Quartet. He has participated in USIA tours to Turkey, Poland, Romania, Portugal, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile, Peru, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia.
After a long and noted career as an internationally esteemed jazz drummer interpreting drum parts for a wide range of composers, as well as leading his own composition project “Singin’ Drums,” Newman Taylor Baker encountered the washboard in 2010 and it changed his life. The connection between his paternal grandfather, Rev. Dr. T. Nelson Baker, the only former enslaved student to achieve a Bachelor of Divinity (1893) and PhD in Philosophy (1903) from Yale University and the washboard, popular during the lifetime of Rev. Dr. Baker, has fueled Newman’s current creative path. Now Newman is a passion-driven washboarder directing WashboardXT, his concept of 21st-century music for the acoustic and electronic washboard.
Newman has always been fascinated by the wide dynamic and emotional range of the drum. He has known of its abilities since playing Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” on his record player at three years old. It has been his mission since then to show that drums have beauty, intensity, sensitivity, power, and emotion at all dynamic levels. Touch is central to his musical expression. On the washboard, Newman conjures a variety of sounds and textures in the way he touches the instrument…the angle of the shells when they make contact, the weight of his arm when he touches it, and the number of fingers he uses. The same principle of touch applies when he use sticks on the drum.
In writing for Singin’ Drums, he utilized the established drum set notation like French composer Darius Milhaud. While both the drum set and washboard are deeply rooted in U.S. African culture, the washboard, which preceded the drum set as the first percussion instrument in the earliest jazz bands, does not yet have notation. Following in the footsteps of Stravinsky and Rimsky-Korsakov who extended percussion techniques for performance, Lawrence D. Morris and Anthony Braxton who developed their own advanced musical notation and language, Newman utilized the pandemic period to begin development of the first notation system and language, and a sound palette, for the acoustic and electronic washboard. Once this is in place, Newman will use it to compose new work for the instrument and to commission new work from others. In April 2022, Newman focused on creating washboard electronic sounds using a multi-effects pedal during a month-long artist-in-residence in Costa Rica. He had the opportunity to use some of those sounds when he performed on the Earth Day Celebration produced by Ballroom Marfa in Marfa, TX.
In 2021, Newman was commissioned to create and perform a score for Healing Voices-Personal Stories’ 2021 documentary entitled, “One In 7,” featuring three residents of the U.S first shelters for male domestic abuse survivors in Dallas, TX. Envisioning a soundtrack that created continuity, movement, and support for the speakers, Newman made a point of composing for each individual, not just their way of speaking but also of their way of being. “One in 7” received the Film Heals Award at the Manhattan Film Festival, New York, NY in 2022.
Other recent WashboardXT highlights include performances with Vienna Carroll and the Folk at the University of Houston-Clear Lake, Houston, TX (2/2022), with vocalist and huqin performer Feifei Yang at Flushing Town Hall, Queens, NY (12/2021), with the Bartek Świątek Trio and the Sylwester Ostrowski Quintet, Szczecin, Poland (6/2021), and with his ensemble featuring pianist Matthew Shipp, acoustic bass guitarist Stomu Takeishi, dancer Trashina Conner for Arts for Art’s Online_Salon, New York, NY
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Elysium Furnace Works is a cooperative project co-led by Mike Faloon and James Keepnews. EFW seeks to present the work of vanguard artists in settings as dedicated and uncompromising as the art itself, focusing primarily although not exclusively on live music performances in and around New York's vibrant Hudson Valley. Follow us on Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/elysiumfurnaceworks — and on Instagram @elysiumfurnaceworks.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
St. Andrew & St. Luke Episcopal Church, Beacon, United States
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