A Chris Forbes Trajectory.

Photo Courtesy Chris Forbes.

Chris has become a helpful regular in the comment zone and actually likes to write so I badgered him to go through the profile question ordeal and ...voila.

1.What brought you to music?

I was interested in music pretty young according to my mother. She said I always seemed to gravitate towards the musical instrument toys at the expense of most of the others. My earliest musical memories revolve around the piano that we found in the parsonage at my Dad's third church posting. It was a South African made Steinway and I sat at it for hours playing clusters and the most dissonant things possible. I remember being really interested in the clash of overtones that low clusters made. I think that even then I had a real kinship with dissonant music. After about a year and a half my parents got me piano lessons. My teacher used a method that immediately encouraged improvisation and composition and those remained interests of mine all through my schooling. Back then actually I didn't see much difference between improv and composing and would often write pieces in my head through improv that I never committed to paper. Early on I was a fan of the twentieth century and luckily grew up in a small midwestern college town with good contemporary music being played all the time. Loved Stravinsky after hearing the Rite of Spring and continued exploring Schoenberg, Webern Ives and even Penderecki, who I met at the age of ten or so. When I was in seventh grade a hippie music teacher (technically he was a Dead Head)  turned me on to Boulez and Stockhausen....and jazz improv. From there it was a quick journey of discovery from Bop and Bird to Ornette, Cecil, Braxton and the like. By the time I was in high school my parents were wishing I was into heavy metal like all my other friends instead of the cacophony that exploded from my room every night. 

2.Describe your role models, muses and mentors.

I've always been a bit of an autodidact with jazz. My piano training was pretty classical up through college. I learned a bit about jazz harmony from a friend of my dad's who played a kind of jazz based church music. Much of the rest of what I know in jazz was from listening pretty carefully to the great bop pianists, Bill Evans and then McCoy, Paul Bley and of course Cecil. The defining role model for me musically is Cecil. I admire his tenacity and his insistence on being himself completely even when it has not been convenient for him. It's impossible to be a free jazz pianist without some debt to Cecil, even if you go in a totally different direction. His is a pretty amazing presence.

I ended up going to Berklee in Boston for college. There was a bit of a free music scene there at the time, mostly surrounding George Garzone and his avant-big band student ensemble. I was a regular for a while at Michael's Pub listening to the Fringe. But it was the early 80s and the avant-garde was really dying at the time...it was pretty lean. My piano teacher encouraged me to move more into composition and I took a traditional composition major with a minor in classical piano. That allowed me to apply for the Master's program at Juilliard where I was accepted and studied with American Master David Diamond. Diamond was definitely a major influence on me. He taught me that every note mattered and how not to settle for my first musical thoughts. He felt the biggest danger for improvisers is that our facility for musical ideas can sometimes mean we don't examine them as much as we could. I've tried to keep that lesson even though I don't compose concert music much any more.

I also have to give props to two individuals on the NYC scene who really helped me early in my time here. I'd kind of given up on free jazz during a long time in Washington DC where the scene was pretty dismal. When I turned 40 and moved to Chicago I had a sort of midlife creative crisis and went back to free playing. I did a little work in Chicago, but when I moved to New York I decided I would really put myself in a learning posture. I met Daniel Carter and spent a lot of time playing with him early on. Daniel is one of the most generous musicians and someone who has the gift to help you build your confidence as an improviser, plus he has an interesting take on just about everything from music to philosophy to politics. The other big influence was Sabir Mateen. Sabir gives workshops sometimes and when I moved to NY I was lucky enough to get into one. I learned more about playing free in a group there than I had in any experience in my life before. Sabir has a real gift for conceptualizing group situations and has a strong idea about what every member of a group should do. He has turned my mind around several times about the role of the piano in free music and unlocked some real mysteries for me...plus at Sabir's workshops I met some of the closet collaborators, Ras Moshe and Matt Lavelle. I will always be grateful for that.

3. Describe your community of colleagues and audiences.

Mostly I hang around the younger elements of the downtown scene. Matt Lavelle is one of my closet collaborators and a good friend. Matt is always on a journey and he really wants to bring all of us with him. Currently I play with him in Morcilla, a group that started out as a Latin/Free concept but has morphed into much more than that.  I'm also working with him in a new group which will come out in a couple weeks at the Festival of New Trumpet and we're pretty excited about it...Matt is describing it as attacking Trane's concept, but in our own way. For my part I'm trying to imagine modal playing that doesn't involve either triads or McCoy....it's an interesting problem.

I also spend a lot of time playing in bands with Steve Swell. I'm involved with Steve's Nation of We band, which is pretty thrilling as it is a collection of really great known and lesser known players, many of whom have played with Cecil. Steve has a really interesting approach to composing for this band, which includes alot of conduction and I find our gigs to be real events...few and far between but really special.

I also am working in a new band with Steve, Rob Brown, Hill Greene and Michael Thompson. I'm excited about this group because the caliber of playing is really high and as a rhythm section we've reached an almost telepathic level fairly quickly. Steven is hoping to record and tour with this band soon. I hope it happens as it would be my first out of NYC touring.

The other major people I work with are people associated with Ras Moshe's Music Now. Ras is gifted with an uncanny ability to put people in musical situations and watch the sparks fly. His Music Now bands are almost always a rotating cast of characters...almost experiements in blending musical personalities. We've made some music I'm really proud of...alot of it is available on YouTube. And Ras is a deep cat...really uncompromising in his vision and very thoughtful.

 
4.What are the important elements you apply to your personal approach to performance, repertoire and composition?

I have an almost mystical relationship to harmony. Early in my life I read Schoenberg's Harmonielehre and I think I got infected with the old Austrian's note mysticism. Schoenberg felt the chord was actually the vertical expanding of the melodic tone. Though he never went far enough, I used him as a starting point for my conception, in which harmony is made out of the cellular structure of melodies and at least to my mind is just a thickening out of the melody and tone color. Various combinations of notes have deeply personal meanings to me. One six note chord I use obsessively came to me twenty years ago in a dream and has always represented the mysterious and numinous for me whenever I use it. Another might represent the earthy or the violent, or the erotic. I don't usually let anyone in on these personal meanings of chords...but it's more or less conscious on my part...like I'm telling a very literal story in tones.

As far as repertoire and composition, most of my work lately has been as a sideman so I haven't performed my own tunes much. I'm hoping to change that. I'm really interested in the line between the composed and the improvised. When I last had a working trio, we did mostly freely improvised work, but in such a way that most audiences thought that the material was pre-composed. I liked that...and I like writing tunes that sound like improvisations. I'm also finding myself more interested in open form composition, game pieces and music inspired by fractals and chaos algorithms.

5.What role does teaching have in your work?

I made my living primarily as a music teacher. I taught piano early in my career but since 1994 I've taught music in schools in Maryland and New York. I'm currently working as a teaching artist in Brooklyn, in a program that combines in school interdisciplinary arts and an afterschool comprehensive arts program housed in the Sunset Park neighborhood. I work with children from kindergarten all the way through high school. This work keeps me creatively fresh and challenged. Through it I have developed in interest in hip hop and how hip hop can be developed in creative ways. I have also learned a lot about world percussion, through my work with our percussion ensemble. And last year we did a musical based on a book by Salman Rushdie. To match the fantasy of the book, we decided to design and build our own orchestra. I immersed myself in instrument making theory and we ended up with many unique mallet and stringed instruments for our orchestra. The music itself combined composed music and conduction and has given me a new outlet for my own creativity. I've continued to experiment with new instruments and tuning systems. My significant other says I can't go into a china shop now without trying to ring all the glasses.

6. How have changes in the economy impacted your work?

I've never really earned a living out of playing or composing music. Oddly, I'm having the best performing year ever in my career, with more gigs per month than ever and most of them actually bringing in some real money. But the teaching artist work, which pays the bills, has been a little shakey. I was laid off for a while this summer, but hired back in the fall. I feel like I've dodged a bullet for now, but the chances of needing new work are greater than they've been before. 

7. If you perform beyond your region or overseas, how has that changed over time?

I have yet to do the overseas thing. I am hoping for it, but also know that it's hard given my teaching schedule. The same is true for domestic touring in any extensive way. However there are some small things in the wings that I hope will pan out.

8.How has technology and changes in the way music circulates impacted your work?

Not really. I never recorded very much before 2004. In fact I had a 20 year hiatus in free jazz and in jazz in general. I've been a sideman in a handful of small label projects and put out my own CD back in 2005. I put out a small batch but I've still got about 100 of 'em left. I honestly love the freedom that the home recording boom has given us as musicians, and I think the internet can be a great marketing tool, but I also think that it's harder and harder to get noticed, even with this expanded market. There's so much out on the net and sooooo much of it is of questionable quality. It can be quite a job to get your small needle in the haystack noticed...quite as difficult as it was in the bad old days of record labels. So to me the answer, as it has always been for avant-garde musicians, is DIY. We need to take some pages from some of the punk bands or Dirty South hip hop. Too many of us are still thinking on a label model and that is almost totally dead, and I don't think it will be coming back for us. We have to create our own destiny.

9. Describe your current and potential future projects and collaborations along with things you would like to do.

Matt Lavelle has my whole career planned out for me! He says I should do a trio album, then a quartet or quintet, another trio album, and then maybe something with strings...the man's full of plans!

Actually I do want to start a working trio soon. I have a lot of ideas and even some people in mind for it, but I'm a really bad leader when it comes to shilling for gigs. I blame it some on my day job, which is really demanding on my time, but if I'm honest I can admit that I have a pretty big lazy streak. And also a bit of an easily bruised ego...rejection is hard and gigs where two people show up really get to me if it's my band.
I have two pieces I'm working on right now that I hope to one day play with bands...one's called The Infernal Machine and is based on a long series of melodies generated by a fractal algorithm, interrupted by free improvisations from the band. The other is called Major Arcana and is a series of notes, textures, scales, methods of improv, each based on a card from the Tarot. The performance while actually be ordered by dealing out a reading and then performing based on the spread of the cards...sort of like Zorn's game pieces but with a different twist I hope.

I've been lucky in the people I've worked with, especially people in Steve Swell's bands but there are a number of people I'd like to persue things with. I'd love to do something permanent with Will Connell, an amazing player who is underexposed in the community but played with Horace Tapscott and Cecil among others. I'd love to do a larger project that could shoot some work to people who've helped me like Matt, Ras, Sabir and Steve. And at some time I'd love to do something with a really large ensemble involving composition and conduction...and even some of my invented gamalan instruments. There's a lot in my mind...there's always a lot in my mind. The problem is bring it out.

Matthew Shipp: 4D

Update note. Mr Shipp will be featured by the BBC tomorrow, 3/8.


In all the roiling Shipp-troversy, there is a trend toward focus on his expressed exasperation with lopsided compensation and conditions issues while tip toeing around what he's actually up to with a piano. All manner of scribbler acrobatics have ensued of which, the funniest is probably the Utne Reader guy's crack at mimicry of Fox 'gotcha journalism' by juxtaposing two general philosophical outlook statements by Mr Shipp and a frequent target of his derision, the uber pompous Mr. Jarrett.

Poor Utne Reader guy is seemingly so excited at his stab at gotcha contrivance that he forgets to consider how similar philosophical outlooks can drive very different outcomes depending on the aims of the respective outlook holders. And yet that should be the heart of the matter which 4D addresses.

Mr. Shipp is essentially the anti Jarrett which to me is a very good thing. Matthew manages to cram more engagement and stimulation into several short minutes of a piece than Jarrett wrings from an hour of soporific minor melody cliche fests and postures. In fact, if you are stuck in some situation where Jarrett drool is close to inducing narcolepsy, a few minutes of Mr. Shipp works like an ear opener.

One only has to note that the entire release consists of fairly short pieces, 16 of them, each quite distinct even if there are some groupings of commonalities to indicate specific areas where Mr. Shipp finds particularly lucid musings. This short piece thing is a subtle if pointed assertion about pianistry options. There are ten original works and six classics.

Once upon a time, as a young dumb kid, I actually paid real money for the brand new Jarrett at Koln ECM double record extravaganza and boy I thought I had something. God, did that thing ever turn out to suck. It would put Cook's brother Cliffie, an innocent bystander, into a drowsy mode of a hot summers day and then we'd have to unravel his snoring. I gave it away to a harmless dancer friend as the dancer circuit does like stuff like that to prance to.

It pretty well marked the beginning of the end for any confidence I might have in the ECM 'brand' and they tended to reinforce the trend with each new vapid pastel monstrosity they trotted out from Burton, Metheny, Eberhard Weber and so on. And Jarrett hovered above it all like their ultimate poster child for coma inducing rambles. But that came out in the wash as it has a home as bed music on the Weather Channel.

In 4D, Mr. Shipp has further embarked on an engaging balance of effort at both the 'pianistic' side of the instrument as generally found in the works of such orishas as Tatum, James P. Johnson and Waller and the 'ensemble' side of the instrument first invented and codified by Earl Hines and brought to stunning levels by Bud Powell.

The run of 4D moves through these two modes and at times skillfully interweaves them in a single piece in ways done by very few. Phineas Newborn, an early practitioner of this interweaving was derided in his day by period dumbos to the point of having a nervous breakdown. His crime was being too 'facile', code for 'we don't get it'. Matthew is in some ways a beneficiary of ground Mr. Newborn broke as our time's version of facile is more likely to be the simple minded flashiness and hollow ostentation one finds over in Jarrett land.

1. 4D
There is some thought given to sequencing and 4D is like a miniature of miniatures, nearly every area of Matthews growth as a thinking pianist gets its hint in the opening. It is well tinged with blue with the melodic front and center. There is a meandering of slackwater stream stretches over tidewater terrain with surprises around each bend. Mr. Shipp does like to startle.

2. The Crack in the Piano's Egg.
The pianistic side rises here with deft darting turns on a dime bubbling through with these distinct remarkable abilities to turn melodic runs inside out in an instant to startle in a whole other way.

3. Equilibrium.
This turns to the hypnotic options of trance state conveyance with a melodic kernel that has a distant collective memory echo in the opening figure used to launch episodes of The Twilight Zone. It attends to the Hines side of pianistry laden with a deft left hand chord comp set against right hand flight ranging over the keyboard with touches of wistfulness interlaced.

4. Teleportation.
The sequence pendulum swing back to the Tatum side with elaborately interweaving syncopation fully engaging both hands contrasted by now and then chunky block chord clusters to cover surprise and then transitions to asymmetry and sudden solitary melody percolations before returning to the interweave kicked up a few notches in tempo.

5. Dark Matter.
The faded ghost of Giant Steps wafts here although with every other tone knocked out and transformed into a work of big sturdy cluster chords.

6. Stairs.
There is some companionship to Dark Matter in this with a more reflective, searching countenance and particularly vivid dynamic contrasts of striking suddenness and much ringing.

7. Jazz Paradox.Note: If poor old Jarrett had to do this in the time allotted he'd probably go catatonic.This is a rush of acrobatics and sonic somersaults with an initial pianistic lean involving a liquidity of flow as of melody poured as it does a spider scamper toward a sudden shift to a minimalist percussive moment redolent of production line manufacturing contraptions to invoke tension before racing off to more melodic percolation of variation waves.

8. Blue Web In Space.
There are punchy pointillist punctuations to underscore the piece shaped with Ellington echo's in a new millennium form. The micro staccato expression of the melody momentum brings to bear yet a different scope for meticulousness.

9. What Is This Thing Called Love.
Leaps in with exuberant playfulness of genuine affection for the parent melody and trends toward the pianistic with clave makeovers that prove there is still considerable potential for expression in that timeless corner of piano craft.

10.Autumn Leaves.
This chestnut gets a lush ringing send up with full force floor shaking of a thing ringing robustly. Mr. Shipp offers up a new benchmark to those who have passed this way before. No wonder the majestic Ms McPartland finds so much to like about their get togethers.

11. Sequence and Vibration.
The simple title masks the likely role of a centerpiece statement. Where many of the compositions and renditions lean either toward the pianistic or the ensemble model, this works very well to incorporate both and is the longest work on the disc. It roams from introspective to exuberant. Melody cascades meet sudden tensions from percussive fixed points to be released into leaps and bounds.

12. Frere Jacques.
Having some fun, I see. It's an urgent appeal to get Jack outa bed to meet some crushing onrushing contingency. The playful choice of such a universal childs ring game melody is a great way to make another benchmark and connect to people. I imagine he could probably give 'Happy Birthday' a pretty impressive overhaul too. The arc of the rendition runs from chordal rumble to spiky pointillistics.

13. Prelude To A Kiss.
Blue tinged lushness and an honest romanticism make this a companion to Autumn Leaves. The Ellington immersion is well seeded with capacities to startle throughout.

14. What A Friend We Have In Jesus.
Succinct, glorious 'old school' gospel is served up fervently with earnest sincerity in case anyone might be wondering about his grounding in 'tradition' and it's subtly short and sweet at something that Jarrett would milk for an hour.

15. Primal Harmonic.
Another understated title is applied to lushness and fullness of sounds flowing like blowing snows of yesteryears outside wintry urban windows whirling toward tomorrow.

16. Greensleeves.
More fun with an old war horse makes a perfect capper to the fireworks and it's a floor shaker. These are some urgent thunderous Green Sleeves.

All in all, Mr. Shipp makes his case for the merits of his work and the exasperations born of its inept reception and sub par compensation. Those who would make much fuss over controversy miss the merit boat unless they actually sit down and focus on the work first. They got it ass backward in a clamor over empty social protocol observance that is rightly a minor footnote alongside the offerings Mr. Shipp consistently makes from the center of a piano stool.

Appreciations from Matthew Shipp.

I first met Mr. Shipp when he was in music school in the 1980's and I knew then he's a man you don't meet every day. I have never had any reason to believe otherwise. Somewhere, the spirit of my honorary uncle, Frank Wright, looks down from on high and knows that this is good.

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My basic concept is a melodic concept.That is a hard thing to define but I always go for a sequence of notes that I feel massage the brain in a good and pleasing way.I don’t want to be melodic in an affected ecm post-jarrett type of way.We don’t need any of that. It's bad enough having Jarrett playing that way let alone anyone else trying to go somewhere else with it. Actually, Bobo Stenson has figured out somewhere great to go with that .

My basic concept of the piano is as a cosmos. I control the space and time of the projectile concrete music object, which is the piano as played by me. it has nothing to do with jazz, even though I am a jazz musician and that is the language I use to paint my pictures. Rather my brain and the piano are one. If you scanned my brain and if the notes I played could be scanned the diagrams would be one. Like Sun Ra, I am a universal musician. I transcend their stupid fucking jazz.

Composition has everything to do with what I do meaning that my playing has way more rigor than a lot of people out here who are supposedly writing compositions. It is way more developed and has way more structural integrity than most of these so called composers even though there is such a heavy improv element to what I do. I defy anyone to say that what I do is not extremely sophisticated. Sonic design is evident in every note and choice I make on my instrument. This improv vs composition talk just needs to fucking stop.

A trio allows me to wear the clothes of a jazz pianist while what I do, syntax and otherwise, is completely another thing. But I understand the clothing of a so called jazz pianist and know how to effect that perception. It's fun.

The specific role of a trio, I don’t know,to have fun.I need to like the people I play with and really want to create something with them based on mutual respect.

My muses are so many and varied. Ive known some weird people in my life and had a very weird education. One of my most important influences was a philosopher and composer in my hometown, Wilmington Delaware, an Afro American named Sunyata, which is actually a Sanskrit word meaning emptiness. Three images he put in my mind as a teenager.

First, he talked a lot about his tai chi teacher and he use to always say his master would rather practice tai chi than eat. That idea was in my mind in the hours and hours of practicing and I always concentrated on focusing chi on the piano.

Second, he talked about an Indian musican whose music was so powerful that when he sang candles would light. I have no idea if that is true but the image was always in my mind.

Third, he always told me that Monk was the model in that he did not give a fuck what all these stupid mother fuckers out here thought. And he instilled in me that I had real originality and a real developed point of view and there would be a lot of stupid mother fuckers in jazz that would not get me. But keep moving forward like they don’t exist because the power of what you do will annihilate them.

In the collaborations I've done over the years, lets just say its fun to see how my piano playing fits into different contexts.There is really nothing else other than that. And also even though I have a completely developed style and a completely developed music that still does not mean that there is still not a lot to learn and everyone has something you can learn. So collaborations are fun and stretch your mind. Of course, at this point I am just interested in doing my own thing. Pianistic considerations don’t exist.It is more ambient considerations, what works in this context

I don’t want to play with anyone else except for the select group of people I play with. I just want to do my own music. I especially don’t want to play with any jazz people, other than the ones im playing with now, especially as a side man. I hear no one in the world with as developed and distinct voice as I have on my instrument for this period in the music.

So why would I play as a sideman for someone else whose music is not as important to this period and jazz going forward in the future as what I'm doing? I mean, who would I play with Wayne Shorter? Yeah, right, give me a break. You have one of those bags to throw up in.

Mr. Shipp will be at the Outpost on August 8th and his trio recording, Harmonic Disorder, refuses to leave my old CD player.