Matthew Shipp's Collected Writings
Thoughts on Black Mystery School Pianists and more...
Last year, pianist (and sometime music critic) Matthew Shipp wrote an essay on what he called the Black Mystery School Pianists, a collection of composers, improvisers, and stylists who moved piano forward and sideways at once. That piece and many others on various subjects have been collected in a new book (order yours here). I’ve been friends with Matt for about 25 years at this point, so I felt I should let someone else review it, and longtime BA contributor Todd Manning has stepped up. Below are his thoughts on Black Mystery School Pianists And Other Writings.
Following last year’s excellent book Singularity Codex, a text by Clifford Allen concerning pianist Matthew Shipp’s records on the Rogue Art label, we are now graced with Black Mystery School Pianists And Other Writings, a collection of writings by Shipp himself. To outsiders, even fans, avant-garde music can be challenging to understand, and books such as these, even if they don’t contain easy answers, are valuable to understanding how the musicians conceptualize what they do.
Yuko Otomo, Shipp’s friend and the widow of his best friend and poet Steve Dalachinsky, handles the book's introduction. She provides some biographical notes about the pianist, but more importantly lays the groundwork for understanding the nature of Shipp as both a writer and a musician. We are grappling here not only with the big questions of art, but also learning that Matthew Shipp is a self-defined Christian-mystic who engages with music as a means to a spiritual end.
While many musicians sidestep the question of their influences, Shipp tackles the question head-on in the title essay. Perhaps others are afraid of being seen as derivative, but anyone who's heard Shipp’s playing knows his voice on the instrument is unique and powerful.
While not denigrating what he indicates to be the Art Tatum lineage, a line that would include Oscar Peterson, Chick Corea, and Herbie Hancock, Shipp sees himself as part of an alternative tradition. This is a family tree that spreads out from Thelonious Monk, and includes Mal Waldron, Andrew Hill, and others. Perhaps most revelatory to some readers will be Hasaan Ibn Ali. While lesser known than other members of the Mystery School, his small discography is full of astounding music.
After that, we get a collection of Shipp’s other writings that provide a window into his musical and spiritual universe. He writes eloquently about the relationship between boxing and jazz, both of which he sees as a “kinetic chess match”.
As if to contradict my earlier statements, there’s a paragraph-long piece called “I Have No Influences” which illustrates his understanding of where his true inspiration derives, his mind intercepting “electro-magnetic frequencies directly from the mind of god”. I have often heard that many great artists feel their work is channeled rather than created, and this seems to be a similar statement.
Several pieces deal directly with other artists, often as memorials, but not always. Once again, whether these are influences or not, they certainly help to place Shipp’s career into a sort of context. We get two pieces dedicated to the legendary David S. Ware, who led an important and long-standing quartet for which Shipp played piano. There is also a memorial to Paul Bley. There is a piece titled “Why Roscoe Mitchell is Important” and very short reflections on Sun Ra and Monk.
Several poetic pieces are also included. The artistic freedom expressed therein provides even greater insight into his music, transcending the limits of more straightforward narrative prose. “Pillars of Tone” is particularly powerful and seems to work great while listening to his music.
The book culminates with “Zero Lecture”, a transcript of a talk he gave at John Zorn’s venue The Stone. (The audio recording is available on the 2CD edition of his solo album Zero.) In some ways, it gathers all that came before and places it in its most concentrated form. While words alone can never capture the depth of Shipp’s music, this is as close as one can get.
The lecture serves as a guide to Shipp’s own philosophical explorations as he tries to come to grips with his own identity and what exactly he does as a being living his life. He obviously has thought about the nature of improvisation, but admits he doesn’t actually know what it is. At another point, he questions “what is jazz?” and seems to conclude it doesn’t exist.
The same lecture reflects on John Coltrane and Sun Ra, and mentions Lao Tzu and William S. Burroughs. Improv is void, Charlie Parker is pure pulse, and Shipp wouldn’t play piano (which is just a thing made of trees and elephants) if there was another way to do what he needed to do. While this might sound chaotic, it’s actually one of the most intimate portraits of a spiritual and creative master’s mind I’ve ever read. And it doesn’t feel like a definitive statement, but rather a peek into a lifelong internal conversation Matthew Shipp has been having — and continues to have — with himself. This isn’t just art, but his own personal religious calling.
Black Mystery School Pianists And Other Writings is short, almost chapbook in length, but it invites both rereading and great contemplation. A long book would be too much, as if he hadn’t figured out yet what he was trying to say. This is condensed information, and the reader needs to unpack it for themselves to truly understand the message. Decoding Shipp’s essays is akin to a sort of gnostic download, the wisdom much greater than just the words themselves.
— Todd Manning
The latest edition of the radio show Such Music, hosted by Rihards Endriksons, journalist and artistic director of Latvia's Skaņu Mežs festival, is online now. Such Music is devoted to new works of free improvised music, either previously unheard or created specifically for the show, and is produced in collaboration with Burning Ambulance. This month, Rihards is presenting an early preview of Anthony Braxton’s digital box set Quartet (England) 1985, which is to be released on the composer’s 80th birthday, June 4. (Pre-order your copy on Bandcamp.) You’ll also hear music from Fire & Flux, Nava Dunkelman, Keiji Haino and Gordon Grdina, and others. Listen on Mixcloud.
If you’re a free subscriber, that’s it for this week. If you’re a paying subscriber, you’ll find below a discussion of the beginnings of novels; a story about hopping trains; a response to a piece I discussed last week; and more. See you there!
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