Matthew Shipp by Daniel Sheehan

The Matthew Shipp Trio, with Mike Bisio on bass and Whit Dickey on drums, is one of the most compelling jazz trios around. Iconoclast Henry Rollins writes about longtime friend Shipp for Philadelphia’s Ars Nova Workshop: “It is listening to Matthew Shipp’s work that has always been a reminder to me that real jazz music, no matter how refined or complex it can be, relies primarily on guts.”

DownBeat hailed the trio’s Art of the Improviser (Thirsty Ear, 2011) as “a monumental work that befits a musician who deserves a place of choice in the jazz piano pantheon.” Shipp and Bisio’s recent pared down duo release Floating Ice (Relative Pitch Records, 2012) received immediate praise as a “testament to their shared chemistry” (All About Jazz). Music that even further reveals the telepathic interplay in the trio – Elastic Aspects (Thirsty Ear, 2012).

Tonight’s concert alternates between music from both the trio and duo recordings, with surprises along the way, emblematic of Shipp’s unique style and his successful collaborations with Bisio and Dickey.

Shipp has played piano since he was 5 years old. He studied at the New England Conservatory of Music with saxophonist Joe Maneri and cut his teeth working with saxophonists Roscoe Mitchell and David S. Ware and bassist William Parker. Shipp holds two enduring label relationships with Hatology and Thirsty Ear, where he also serves as curator and director of the label’s Blue Series.

Bisio, no stranger to Seattle audiences, invariably astounds audiences with the beauty of his tone and the intensity of his very personal musical language. As a recording artist, Bisio appears on over 60 CDs. As a composer, he has been recognized with nine project grants from various arts organizations; in 2003, he was awarded a Washington State Artist Trust Fellowship.

Dickey is a uniquely gifted drummer, perhaps best known for his collaborations with David S. Ware and Shipp. A composer as well as a drummer, Dickey has reached new heights in his music with a recent coterie of great musicians, including alto saxophonist Rob Brown. He has performed with Shipp since 1991 and continues to play and record with Roy Campbell Jr., Mat Maneri, Chris Lightcap and many others.

Trio X is Joe McPhee on brass and reeds, Dominic Duval on bass and Jay Rosen on drums.

Throughout his career, McPhee has forged unlikely but rewarding partnerships around the globe, working with everyone from composer Pauline Oliveros to saxophonist Evan Parker and bassist William Parker. In the 90s, McPhee discovered two like-minded improvisers in Duval and Rosen.

Duval has been the bassist of choice for pianist Cecil Taylor for much of the last decade, while frequent cohort Rosen has stoked the fires of veterans such as Sonny Simmons and Charles Gayle.

The trio tonight went with title Trio X after they premiered at New York’s Vision Festival in 1998 unnoticed by the press. The Vision Festival debut notwithstanding, the band now receives favorable notice for their recordings on the CIMP and Cadence Jazz labels, and especially for their live appearances, informed by a kind of tao of the avant-garde.

Trio X’s newest CD First Date (CjR, 2012), a recording of that 1998 Vision Festival performance, will be released at tonight’s performance.

– DB