New Haven Advocate

[Guy Berger]

I thought this article, "Fire Music", was pretty interesting. I'll have to check out the venue they talk about some time:

They've only just taken the stage—or the concavity—and Matthew Shipp can't keep his fingers off those keys. His partner, William Parker, is still in prep mode, righting his upright bass, rosining his bow, as Shipp stares dreamily at the keys of the concert grand upon which he lets rip, the slightest grin crossing his lips, a man with a plan. His fingers twist one around the other, involuted lines weaving an anticipatory harmonic density that Parker slowly begins to emerge within, punctuating, annotating, generating a second momentum.

They tease out rubato crescendi, coalesce around repeated figures, then recede to reveal a quieter dynamic and begin a different, related process. Shipp transforming gospel chords into chromatic bursts of startling noise (I overhear one young music major behind me dismissing such characteristic Shipp-ish expression as "cheesy octotonics," where his compatriot heard Prokofiev), and, as near as I could determine, revisiting bars 25 through 28 of "Green Dolphin St." at different points during the second set.

Parker releases high-register choirs by bowing above the bridge, and literally gives his bass' neck the back of his right hand, and its front, in rapid succession, creating a radical overtone texture via a two-handed tapping technique you never heard from Van Halen. The room is packed, intimate, utterly rapt in the experience—you can actually hear Shipp's fingers striking the keys, distinct and a few nanoseconds in advance of the notes they sound. Little wonder, then, the wood behind both musicians seems to be writhing, tendril-like, and coming unglued, jumping off the wall.

Let's step back a bit in time. I arrived at Firehouse 12 earlier in the evening of May 7 and spent some time checking out this remarkable new cultural outpost in New Haven's Ninth Square. Tonight's show would be the first concert in an improvised-music series to be presented here, a series curated by Joe Morris, the native New Havener and noted experimental guitarist and bassist. In presenting Matthew Shipp and William Parker, the series is starting at the top of its game...

Edited June 11, 2005 by Guy Berger