Open the tray card to Matthew Shipp's second recording in Thirsty Ear's Blue Series and you see the simply scrawled words "Cosmic Consciousness," written in the pianist's handwriting. Such simplicity brings to mind how seldom it is to have so grand a plan in place for music. Where Shipp's Pastoral Composure took an off-kilter look at hard bop (and a gorgeous look at "Frère Jacques") with trumpeter Roy Campbell as the only horn in the quartet, New Orbit calls on Wadada Leo Smith's trumpet as the sole horn. The music delves deeply into the consciousness of improvisation, building on alternating, near-meditative piano figures and then whispering and bursting with Smith's horn. The pacing is at ease, with Shipp's intermittent solo pieces wandering into and through themselves so that they take on a slight roiling appeal, only to be joined by bassist William Parker, drummer Gerald Cleaver, and Smith's loose, fat-toned trumpet--which seems connected via some cosmic dimension to Shipp's trance-triggering keyboard work. What's "cosmic" here? Perhaps it's just the idea that this foursome can come together and weave avant-garde explorations into something that, like the Art Ensemble of Chicago, rolls all jazz into a series of tunes that never veer from inspired, even visionary, brilliance. --Andrew Bartlett
Matthew Shipp's New Orbit,Matthew Shipp's New Orbit,Thirsty Ear,Avant-Garde Jazz,Free Improvisation,Free Jazz,Jazz,Jazz Music,Modern Composition,Modern Creative,Pop
Jazz Music:
- Mean Streets: No Bridges
- Meeting the Tenors
- Minimal Brass
- Orienta: The Markko Polo Adventures
- Play-Penn
- Plays with Feeling/The Way We Were
- Prima Show in the Casbar
- Projecting
- Quartet (London) 1985 [Live]
- Rahsaan: The Complete Mercury Recordings Of Roland Kirk [Box set]
Jazz Music
Mixed Live Club Velvet St Louis (Includes Bonus DVD in 5.1 Surround Sound) [Enhanced] [Live]
Love the Cup [Original recording remastered]
Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
Live Yardbirds! Featuring Jimmy Page [Live]
Original Mixmasters, Vol. 1: Often Imitated