Matthew Shipp solo album on Cantaloupe Music

[T.D.]

His first recording for this label (which is associated with Bang on a Can)

 

The Cosmic Piano | Cantaloupe Music

 

AVAILABLE NOW
on CD and all streaming platforms

Matthew Shipp presents
The Cosmic Piano

His first solo recording for Cantaloupe Music!

Shipp celebrates the summer solstice today with
two concerts at the Rothko Chapel in Houston, TX

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.

"The preparation is your life," Shipp explains. "If you're a real improviser — and I mean real by acknowledging that it's a praxis and an art form and a discipline — it's like being a boxer. You do your road work, speed bag, heavy bag and then you spar, and it's an all-day process for you. It's a lifestyle."

As with all of Shipp's music, this recording goes beyond any simple categorization, and in part informs why he wanted to release the album through Cantaloupe. As Bang on a Can co-founder David Lang writes in the liner notes, "Matthew had the idea that if his music could be heard in the context of Cantaloupe's catalog, it could encourage people to hear a different aspect of what he does. It isn't that he made a different kind of music than he usually makes — this music is clearly his! What has changed is the context in which we are listening to it."

 

Edited June 20 by T.D.