Chad Fowler & Matthew Shipp - Old Stories / 2CD set

2022 CD release.

“A duo is such a specific format, and I've done a lot of them,” reflects Matthew Shipp, one of New York's premier improvisational pianists for the past 40 years, who's worked with the likes of David S. Ware, Roscoe Mitchell, William Parker, Ivo Perelman and many others. “I really relish the raw interaction of a duo. It's kind of a discipline — a very specific thing. It can present a whole dramatic compositional puzzle.” And to be sure, he considers purely extemporaneous improvisation to be an act of composition as much as anything. It's no accident that the pianist, associated with so-called free jazz for most of his life, sees Duke Ellington, a composer's composer, as a key inspiration.

Ellington was a fortuitous touchstone for Shipp to bring to his recent collaboration with Arkansas-based saxophonist Chad Fowler on Old Stories, their new album of duets on Mahakala Music. For his part, Fowler brought to the sessions a longstanding fascination with Ellington sideman (and alto saxophone pioneer) Johnny Hodges, though, like Shipp, this is expressed obliquely through Fowler's work with avant garde luminaries like Alvin Fielder, Douglas Ewart and Parker.

It 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.”