Duke Ellington is the fortuitous touchstone that Matthew Shipp to bring to his recent collaboration with Arkansas-based saxophonist Chad Fowler on Old Stories, their new album of duets on Mahakala Music. For his part, Fowler brought to the sessions a longstanding fascination with Ellington sideman (and alto saxophone pioneer) Johnny Hodges, though, like Shipp, this is expressed obliquely through Fowler's work with avant garde luminaries like Alvin Fielder, Douglas Ewart and Parker. To Shipp, the title of the album and the chapters comprising it match the music perfectly. "It's a narrative," he says. "A novel of sorts. And even if your story is new, it's a rearranging of elements. All the new stories are old, in some ways. We seem to have been prepared for it, somehow. It was a real delight. Between the freshness of a new encounter and being prepared, that balance is really there. That's what makes it vibrant and exciting for me." Or, as Fowler puts it, "When you listen to it, it feels like we already knew each other, like we're old friends, even though we had barely talked to each other before that. So it felt like the old shared stories that we tell, that reference events that neither of us has experienced." 001. Disk 1: Chapter I 002. Disk 1: Chapter II 003. Disk 1: Chapter III 004. Disk 1: Chapter IV 005. Disk 1: Chapter V 006. Disk 1: Chapter VI 007. Disk 1: Chapter VII 008. Disk 2: Chapter VIII 009. Disk 2: Chapter IX 010. Disk 2: Chapter X 011. Disk 2: Chapter XI 012. Disk 2: Chapter XII 014. Disk 2: Chapter XIV

Symbol Systems occupies a special place in Matthew Shipp's discography. Originally issued in 1995 on the No More Records label, it was at the time his sixth release as a leader or co-leader, but significantly his first solo album, and as such provided us with the purest view to date of his multifaceted, indivisible improvisational/compositional concepts. Matthew Shipp was born in 1960 in Delaware. He began piano at 5 years old, and fell in love when jazz when he was 12. After moving to New York in 1984 he quickly became one of the leading lights in the New York Jazz Scene. Mr. Shipp has reached the holy grail of jazz in that he possesses a unique style on his instrument that is all his own- and he's one of the few in jazz that can say so.

Avant-jazz pianist and composer Matthew Shipp has been referred to as the "elder statesman" of the art form by DownBeat magazine, but the reach and scope of his music extends much further than mere genre. The Cosmic Piano delivers on that promise - a solo recording that taps into the deeper exploratory potential of the instrument, with Shipp channeling a lifetime of knowledge and a daunting array of influences into nearly an hour of spontaneous, enlightened and joyfully rendered music.

Vinyl LP pressing. Within the voluminous catalog that pianist Matthew Shipp has created over the last three and a half decades, his solo piano work has charted a unique and compelling pathway for the evolution of the instrument's vocabulary. On Codebreaker, that path turns yet another unexpected corner, continuing to venture further while taking a surprising turn inward. Codebreaker finds Shipp in an uncharacteristically meditative state of mind. Though the language is unmistakably his own, the usual violent attacks, dense clusters and insistent circularity are in short supply, replaced by harmonic nebulae that luxuriate in the mysterious resonances that Shipp conjures from the keyboard. As ever with the work of this consummate improviser, intention had very little to do with it.

Vinyl LP pressing. Within the voluminous catalog that pianist Matthew Shipp has created over the last three and a half decades, his solo piano work has charted a unique and compelling pathway for the evolution of the instrument's vocabulary. On Codebreaker, that path turns yet another unexpected corner, continuing to venture further while taking a surprising turn inward. Codebreaker finds Shipp in an uncharacteristically meditative state of mind. Though the language is unmistakably his own, the usual violent attacks, dense clusters and insistent circularity are in short supply, replaced by harmonic nebulae that luxuriate in the mysterious resonances that Shipp conjures from the keyboard. As ever with the work of this consummate improviser, intention had very little to do with it.