Matthew Shipp To Duke

Shipp plays in his own inimitably personal style some of the most beloved of Duke's compositions, "rewriting" the book and making this excursion uniquely his own. Many greats have tackled Ellington. The one who immediately comes to mind is Monk with his now legendary trio date for Riverside records Thelonious Monk plays the Music of Duke Ellington. The result is fascinating. But unlike Monk doing it his way, though somewhat restrained, we have Shipp going all out. Not simply personalizing Duke but messing up the time signatures and "corrupting" the melodies whenever and wherever possible. To just play free without the cumbersome restrictions of composition and cliché is, to my mind, one of the highest forms of art if done to it's maximum beauty and capacity, but equally high is the ability to take the melody, tear it to pieces, yet keep its integrity intact. Few artists can do this. Lee Konitz, using a completely different attack, the first who comes to mind. Shipp definitely walks in that tradition, creating, what I like to think of as cubing (ala cubism) the head > abstracting / distending and respecting it while at the same time allowing it to flourish and morph. Steve Dalachinsky, excerpt from the liner notes