What if?

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What if?
Studio album by Matthew Shipp

Publication
(s)

2019

Label (s) RogueArt

Format (s)

CD

Genre (s)

jazz

Title (number)

12

running time

51:42

occupation

production

Michel Dorbon

Studio (s)

Park West Studios, Brooklyn

chronology
Symbolic Reality
(2019) 		What if? The Piano Equation
(2020)
Template: Info box music album / maintenance / parameter error

What if? is a jazz album by Matthew Shipp and Nate Wooley . The recordings, taken on June 13, 2019 in Park West Studios, Brooklyn, were released on November 8, 2019 on RogueArt .

background

What if? is Shipp and Wooley's first duo session; the two had previously played together on two of Ivo Perelman's recording sessions , Philosopher's Stone ( Leo Records , 2017) and Strings 4 (Leo, 2019) with Mat Maneri . In between albums, Shipp contributed to Wooley-produced New American Songbooks , Volume 2 (Pleasure of Text Records, 2018), a compilation of piano works that included pieces by Kris Davis , Matt Mitchell and Aruán Ortiz . The twelve dense compositions on What If? are all from Shipp.

In the liner notes of the album, lyricist Steve Dalachinsky, who died in 2019, wrote:

“ What if the pages were too numerous to count?
Thoughts collide / collapse.
The output of two great thinkers both inside and outside music.
Two unique artists are constantly expanding in their very personal, unique universes.
Take risks and love. Still, stay true to the shapes during the transformation.
Diverse. Multi-directional. Multi-dimensional. "

Track list

  • Matthew Shipp - Nate Wooley: What If? (RogueArt ROG-0097)
  1. What if? 5:02
  2. New Light 4:38
  3. Plug Vortex 3:36
  4. Points of Fractions 3:10
  5. Ktu 3:40
  6. The Angle 5:05
  7. Nova Jazz 3:37
  8. Space Junk 6:41
  9. The Ball 2:58
  10. Cosmic Rumble 5:26
  11. Circular Juice from the Matrix 6:37
  12. Call in Space 4:13

reception

According to Mark Corroto, who reviewed the album in All About Jazz , in this duo session you experience “a kind of chess game between flesh-covered supercomputers, in which every possible acoustic movement is calculated.” Wooley shows himself to be a master of advanced techniques, his novel ones Sounds, the guttural explosions and the raspy breaths. He delivers a stream of consciousness to Shipp's hammering chords on "Ktu" and takes part in a kind of wordplay exchange that can be heard on "The Angle". In reality this music is the opposite of artificial intelligence , with both players showing the most human form of communication, sensitive listening.

Nate Wooley with The Fictive Five at a concert at Club W71 , Weikersheim

Also in All About Jazz , Karl Ackermann wrote that although the audience of these two artists was prepared to expect the unexpected, Shipp and Wooley had now developed unusual forms of playing that made their work easily recognizable. “Shipp mixes thundering chords and enraptured piano figures with appealing motifs. Similarly, Wooley makes screeching and growling noises, but can abruptly switch to ethereal phrases. ”According to Ackermann, Shipp and Wooley are virtuosos with a special talent for irrepressible inventive improvisation and unconventional techniques. In these pieces, the author sums up, “primal energy and inspired revelation lead to a fascinating journey to the periphery of jazz”.

According to S. Victor Aaron, who wrote the album in Something Else! reviewed, Shipp's twelve musical sketches are characterized by temperament and tactics, and some of them would convey a sense of calm. “Two original parts for piano and trumpet together result in a third, uniform original part for What If? , in which Matthew Shipp and Nate Wooley find a telepathic community in an unusual duet. ”Aaron sums up, we no longer have to ask ourselves,“ what if ”these two had joined forces for one record. What if? give a very satisfactory answer to that.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Mark Corroto: Matthew Shipp / Nate Wooley: What If? All About Jazz, January 29, 2020, accessed July 31, 2020 .
  2. ↑ a b Karl. Ackermann: Matthew Shipp / Nate Wooley: What If? All About Jazz, February 6, 2020, accessed July 31, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Information about the album at Bandcamp
  4. ↑ Matthew Shipp - Nate Wooley: What If? at Discogs
  5. ↑ Matthew Shipp + Nate Wooley - 'What If?' (2019). Something Else, July 6, 2020, accessed July 7, 2020 .