Avant-jazz pianist Matthew Shipp has quite a history. He's been recording as a leader since 1991 and has eighteen albums under his belt. He's had a working relationship with Henry Rollins, whose label 2.13.61 released several of the aforementioned recordings. Shipp claimed that he was done recording, that it was time to move on -- but when Thirsty Ear approached him about kicking off their new Blue Series of jazz recordings, he couldn't resist. He seems to have grasped the opportunity to redefine himself. Pastoral Composure is the most straight-ahead album in his catalog. For starters, he's leading a traditional jazz quartet rather than the drummerless duos and trios of his past. Some of the tunes he's playing are pretty orthodox, too. "Visions" is an unadulterated blues form. "Frère Jacques" is a "wink, wink, nod, nod" joke in the "we jazzers appropriate anything" vein. He even covers a standard, Ellington's "Prelude to a Kiss".
In terms of quality I find Pastoral Composure to be a mixed bag. Shipp's compositional brilliance shines on tunes like "Gesture" (an intense, fiery work reminiscent of Sketches of Spain) and the title track (an equally intense but more introverted work awash with cymbals crashes and melodic flurries). These works are vibrant and harmonically and structurally adventuresome. They easily obscure the more banal contemporary jazz out there today. "Merge" is a impressive, melodic frenzy that gives Cecil Taylor a run for his money (though it's more delicate than anything I've heard from Taylor). Shipp's ingenious reworking of "Prelude to a Kiss" is the gem of the disc. The facility with which he twists and recontextualizes Ellington's material is disturbingly acute. I equate this in brilliance with some of my favorite Marcus Roberts covers (like "Cherokee").
A couple of tracks here leave something to be desired. "Visions" is my least favorite. It's simply boring. Shipp's comping during his solo is tedious, as if all his attention was focussed on the melody. And maybe I'm anal, but I'd swear the piano is out of tune in the high range. While this is charming on a Monk album, in the polished, sophisticated setting in which Shipp works it is distracting. "Frère Jacques" is too cute for me. Twenty seconds of it is clever, but five-plus minutes strains the concept. Then again, sometimes I'm a stick in the mud!
In general, Shipp shines when he's pushing towards new musical territory. It's only in his most mainstream moments that I disagree with him. If I could excise two or three tracks from Pastoral Composure, I think I'd really be smitten.
