By Gary Chapin
When I first read Shipp’s essay, “Black Mystery School Pianists,” two years after it was originally published (I saw a reference to it by someone in this parish), it simultaneously opened my mind AND brought things together in a way that made sense. I read the essay in the context of thinking about Mal Waldron, a fave of mine. In 1969 in the notes for his ECM album, Free at Last, Waldron wrote that the new album was his attempt to live in the world of Cecil Taylor (another fave)—a world of freedom. This sounds great, of course! But reading this in 1990 (when I first got Free at Last), I was baffled. I don’t know how much freedom Waldron thought he exhibited compared to how much freedom Cecil Taylor deployed—but the two, Waldron and Taylor, sounded nothing alike! How is it that they are grouped, by Waldron himself and by Shipp in this essay, as part of the same “project?”
Shipp’s words on this upended my assumptions and led me on a quest that has improved my quality of life ever since, including improving my appreciation of Waldron and Taylor. Imagine if Shipp had written a whole set of essays with comparable insights, joys, revelations, and quests!?!
Well, he has.
Nothing in this short book is as revelatory as that first essay, though so much is intriguing. Connecting improvisation to boxing is something I haven’t thought about since Miles Davis’s Jack Johnson album. His tributes to David S. Ware are moving and send you back to that gentleman’s music with a new compassion. A set of tour notes mixes philosophical observations with the practical, ground level movements of getting to spaces and playing for money. Many of the pieces are short — some seeming like excerpts from letters, almost — and there are four or five poems that beautifully and succinctly capture the spirit and rhythm of Shipp’s project. The final essay nearly matches up to the first and offers a General Theory of Improvisation that has you listening to old friends in new ways. He’s got a system or set of guiding principles in mind. It comes out in his music, but hearing it expressed in words is a new experience that adds to the whole.
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