Matthew Shipp - Old Stories '2022

Tracks list

Tracklist:

01. Chapter I
02. Chapter II
03. Chapter III
04. Chapter IV
05. Chapter V
06. Chapter VI
07. Chapter VII
08. Chapter VIII
09. Chapter IX
10. Chapter X
11. Chapter XI
12. Chapter XII
13. Chapter XIII
14. Chapter XIV


 Read MoreIt was the latter bassist who indirectly brought Shipp and Fowler
together. “I met Matt just last year at the Vision Festival, the free jazz
event that William Parker and his wife run,” says Fowler. “I knew
his music well, but I'd never met him in person. We ended up standing together,
watching William Parker's band.” Sensing they were kindred spirits, they
immediately made arrangements for a session at Park West Studios in Brooklyn.

Indeed, the duets heard on Old Stories comprise their first real interaction.
“I think I talked to him on the phone for two minutes about the
logistics,” recalls Fowler. “We barely even said hello before we
started. And I think it shaped the session. He was in there playing Ellington
tunes when I arrived, warming up. Really swinging, beautiful ballads. And then
we just started recording. We never discussed anything beforehand. By far the
longest conversation we had ever had was the musical conversation in the studio
that day.”

That suited Shipp just fine. “We just started,” he recalls.
“Jim Clouse the engineer said, 'Rolling,' and that was it. After every
track, we'd take a second and we'd look at each other. Then, 'Are we on?' 'Yeah,
you're on.' And we'd start again.” Having said that, Shipp notes that both
players brought their musicianship to bear on every second, every beat.
“You kind of just know, 'Okay, we've done this, this and this, so it's
probably time to do something like this, texture-wise, because we haven't
covered that. That process takes on a life of its own, and it just flows from
there. Like, whoever does the first attack, the other is thinking, 'How is this
piece going? What are we going to explore?' And that information is conveyed
instantly at the beginning. That takes a lot of experience and
musicianship.”

The tracks that emerged reveal two acute compositional minds at work in real
time. “I consider myself a conceptualist and a musical thinker who is
always going towards the coherence,” Shipp notes. “Even in what
might be perceived as the most free form settings. Music is language, and any
language has its own internal logic, its own internal waveform generating
itself. If you're telling a story, which is what jazz is supposed to be about,
you're dealing with a real internal language. And if it's an honest expression,
you'll make sentences of sorts. Paragraphs.”

And, true to the album's title, these stories are weathered and worn, owing to
the century-old reference points both players rely on. Yet there's tension in
their contrasting approaches as well. “I get the sense that Chad's played
a lot of R&B,” says Shipp. “I hear the Southern aspects of his
playing. I also hear a lot of the second generation avant garde. I play mostly
with East Coast, New York style players, and even though he's obviously capable
of hanging in that realm, and does, he is a little different.”

Fowler fully embraces the Southern flavors he's steeped in. “I grew up
musically playing in Memphis with R&B bands, listening to Hi Records all the
time. It used to be my goal to play sax the same way Al Green sings when he
improvises. Even when playing completely raucous, noisy stuff, I think you can
hear that I come from a blues sort of background.”

That, in turn, goes hand in hand with the respect both players have for the
sounds of the jazz age, starting with Fowler's choice of instrument. Unlike most
alto players, he favors an archaic straight alto, which Rahsaan Roland Kirk
called a “stritch,” and the similarly shaped saxello. “Having
a weird instrument changes my mindset when I play, in a way that I think is
good,” Fowler says. “It's nice to think of it as not being a
saxophone.”

And so, even amidst wailing, textural approaches, both players are capable of a
lyricism that's not always associated with free playing. “Chad's a great
musician — very responsive and sensitive. I hear a lot of Johnny Hodges
in his playing,” says Shipp. “I asked him about that afterwards, and
he said that's one of his favorite musicians. There's a lot of Duke Ellington in
my playing, especially when I use really elegant chord voicings, and I hear Chad
responding to that.”

Which brings us back to the musical coherence of these exploratory recordings.
As Fowler reflects, “To me, this session, more than anything I've ever
done, feels like composed songs. And I literally mean songs, because there are
melodies and form and development. The track called 'Chapter 8,' which is the
only piece where I play the saxcello, really sounds like we're reading written
notes off a page.”

To Shipp, the title of the album and the chapters comprising it match the music
perfectly. “It's a narrative,” he says. “A novel of sorts. And
even if your story is new, it's a rearranging of elements. All the new stories
are old, in some ways. We seem to have been prepared for it, somehow. It was a
real delight. Between the freshness of a new encounter and being prepared, that
balance is really there. That's what makes it vibrant and exciting for
me.”

Or, as Fowler puts it, “When you listen to it, it feels like we already
knew each other, like we're old friends, even though we had barely talked to
each other before that. So it felt like the old shared stories that we tell,
that reference events that neither of us has experienced.” - Alex Greene

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