''Points'' is an album by American jazz pianist

Matthew Shipp Matthew Shipp (born December 7, 1960) is an American pianist, composer, and bandleader. Early life and education Shipp was raised in Wilmington, Delaware, and began playing piano at six years old. His mother was a friend of trumpeter Clifford B ...

recorded in 1990 and released on the Swedish Silkheart label.

Music

Shipp cites the following influences in "Points": Andrew Hill,

Duke Ellington Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974) was an American jazz pianist, composer, and leader of his eponymous jazz orchestra from 1923 through the rest of his life. Born and raised in Washington, D.C., Ellington was based ...

Nina Simone Eunice Kathleen Waymon (February 21, 1933 – April 21, 2003), known professionally as Nina Simone (), was an American singer, songwriter, pianist, and civil rights activist. Her music spanned styles including classical, folk, gospel, blues, ...

Hasaan Ibn Ali Hasaan Ibn Ali (born William Henry Langford, Jr.; May 6, 1931 – 1980) was an American jazz pianist and composer. Ibn Ali was strongly influenced by Elmo Hope, and his playing was rapid and intense, retaining a sense of rhythm even when his st ...

Scriabin Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin (; russian: Александр Николаевич Скрябин ; – ) was a Russian composer and virtuoso pianist. Before 1903, Scriabin was greatly influenced by the music of Frédéric Chopin and composed ...

and

Debussy (Achille) Claude Debussy (; 22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He was among the most influential composers of the ...

. Other influences are the most adventurous of

Herbie Hancock Herbert Jeffrey Hancock (born April 12, 1940) is an American jazz pianist, keyboardist, bandleader, and composer. Hancock started his career with trumpeter Donald Byrd's group. He shortly thereafter joined the Miles Davis Quintet, where he help ...

's electronic endeavors, though Shipp himself does not use electronics in any way, the Coltrane's concept of Cosmic Music, and ''

Nefertiti Neferneferuaten Nefertiti () ( – c. 1330 BC) was a queen of the 18th Dynasty of Ancient Egypt, the great royal wife of Pharaoh Akhenaten. Nefertiti and her husband were known for a radical change in national religious policy, in whic ...

'' by the

Miles Davis Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926September 28, 1991) was an American trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th-century music. Davis adopted a variety of music ...

Second Quintet. Two painterly influences upon Shipp's work are:

Jackson Pollock Paul Jackson Pollock (; January 28, 1912August 11, 1956) was an American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. He was widely noticed for his " drip technique" of pouring or splashing liquid household paint onto a hor ...

for his lyricism, space, organic form and body; and

Mark Rothko Mark Rothko (), born Markus Yakovlevich Rothkowitz (russian: Ма́ркус Я́ковлевич Ротко́вич, link=no, lv, Markuss Rotkovičs, link=no; name not Anglicized until 1940; September 25, 1903 – February 25, 1970), was a Latv ...

for his chromatic color fields and religious brightness. "Afro Sonic" was inspired by

Randy Weston Randolph Edward "Randy" Weston (April 6, 1926 – September 1, 2018) was an American jazz pianist and composer whose creativity was inspired by his ancestral African connection. Weston's piano style owed much to Duke Ellington and Thelonious M ...

and utilizes the repetitive thematic pattern of a talking drum as its backbone. Shipp indicates that "Piano Pyramid" is a piece to present the trio in a true tradition as "best exemplified by

Bud Powell Earl Rudolph "Bud" Powell (September 27, 1924 – July 31, 1966) was an American jazz pianist and composer. Along with Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Kenny Clarke and Dizzy Gillespie, Powell was a leading figure in the development of modern ...

".''Points''
at

Silkheart Records Silkheart Records is a Sweden, Swedish record company and record label, label dedicated to improvised music and free jazz. Lars-Olof Gustavsson and Keith Knox founded Silkheart in 1985 in music, 1985. In 1991, Jimmy Johnson of Forced Exposure su ...

Reception

In his review for

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

, Brian Olewnick states "Shipp would, to some extent, work his way out of this conundrum in ensuing years and fans of his work will want to hear ''Points'' at the very least for its historical value but, objectively, it's an inconsistent and not entirely original release." ''

The Penguin Guide to Jazz ''The Penguin Guide to Jazz'' is a reference work containing an encyclopedic directory of jazz recordings on CD which were (at the time of publication) currently available in Europe or the United States. The first nine editions were compiled by ...

'' says that this album and the next, '' Circular Temple'', "takes some clues from the avant-garde past – Taylor, Bley, and Shipp's personal favorite, Andrew Hill – while going their own way in a quite dramatic fashion moment to moment." The ''

JazzTimes ''JazzTimes'' is an American magazine devoted to jazz. Published 10 times a year, it was founded in Washington, D.C. in 1970 by Ira Sabin as the newsletter ''Radio Free Jazz'' to complement his record store. Coverage After a decade of growth ...

'' review by Reuben Jackson states "Skeptics who think so-called 'free' music lacks definable theme and variations would do well to listen to titles like 'Afro Sonic', a gentle yet confident piece of swirling beauty, and 'Piano Pyramid', in which Shipp's lower register work and Parker's bass, dark as shadows, take a sparsely noted theme through rustling variations."

Track listing

:''All compositions by Matthew Shipp'' # "Points Number Two" – 20:42 # "Afro Sonic" – 5:37 # "Piano Pyramid" – 10:05 # "Points Number One" – 34:24

Personnel

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exc ...

, conductor * Rob Brown –

alto sax The alto saxophone is a member of the saxophone family of woodwind instruments. Saxophones were invented by Belgian instrument designer Adolphe Sax in the 1840s and patented in 1846. The alto saxophone is pitched in E, smaller than the B tenor ...

on 1, 2 & 4 * William Parker – bass,

Whit Dickey Whit Dickey (born May 28, 1954) is an American drummer. He has recorded albums with David S. Ware and Matthew Shipp. Biography His first album as a leader was ''Transonic Transonic (or transsonic) flow is air flowing around an object at ...

–

drums A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other Percussion instrument, auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair o ...

References

{{Authority control 1992 albums Matthew Shipp albums Silkheart Records albums