MATTHEW SHIPP
photo by Anna Yatskevich
Attn: the great pianist has more than just a rapper's failed album on his mind
Interview by Jason Gross
(August 2025)
I didn't want to interview Matthew Shipp. Don't get me wrong- I have enormous respect for the pianist/composer and we featured two other extensive interviews with him in 1999 and 2022.
The problem was that his name was all over the news now. You'd think that this would be a good thing but the issue was that his name was popping up in publications that would normally not give a shit about him and for the wrong reasons. Former rapper and now instrumentalist Andre 3000 attended the fabled Met Gala with a Burberry designed giant piano-jacket while also releasing 7 Piano Sketches as a download EP via Epic Records in early May. The promotional stunt 'stole the show,' according to Vogue but the album didn't exactly get glowing reviews.
Shipp was already a prolific Facebook poster. On May 5, the day the album came out, he had 5 posts, none of them about the 3000 record. On May 9th, Shipp shared his forthright opinion about the album there and he did not hold back. Then came articles from Variety, NME and others, salivating like dogs over Shipp's criticism. Shipp responded via FB posts with some humor and was overwhelmed with Facebook friend requests as a result (he's now at the 5000 friend limit there, so you missed your chance). But his subsequent posts about Miles Davis, Roscoe Mitchell, Bruce Lee and Muhammad Ali, plus dozens of jabs at Donald Trump, haven't garnered much attention in comparison. Shipp also used his newly expanded platform to rep for late saxophonist David S. Ware. In light of the controversy, Shipp did a very thoughtful interview on this Substack about the whole affair.
But what about the decades of amazing work that Shipp had done before all of this? And what about his thoughtful new album The Cosmic Piano on Cantaloupe Records? And what about his recent book, Black Mystery School Pianists And Other Essays? Both of these got recognition in light of the media flurry but I can't help but believe they were buried as a sideshow regardless because of what happened otherwise.
I'd contacted Shipp to talk about all of this but was worried that his recent projects were getting buried under all the other coverage. He insisted though that he had more to say about everything and I was happy to give him a platform here, especially as he addresses his work otherwise and his perspective on his career now. And no, he does not hate rap music- he loved it even before he collaborated with rappers and he has other hip hop collaborations coming up, as you'll hear about here.
PSF: After all the controversy, I feel bad that you're now widely known to an audience outside of jazz fans because you didn't like a rap record. It's so unfair because you've done such amazing work otherwise.
MS: Well, you know, the world is what it is. I'm 64 and if I didn't accept that I would have been finished a long time ago. (laughs) And it's not like I haven't been noticed over the years. Do I feel I've gotten what I should have? Of course not. But that's pretty much the plight of pretty much any jazz musician. If you're a jazz musician, you know your position in society, you know the worth of what you do. And you know that on a certain metaphorical level, you're shat upon and that you do the work anyway because you have to do it. But isn't rich that I go so much massive, worldwide publicity from saying nasty stuff about a rapper playing piano? (laughs) When you consider the decades of work that I've done in different types of mediums..
PSF: YES, THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT I MEAN! IT'S MADDENING!!!
MS: I know. What can you say?
PSF: And it's funny because I was looking at all the Facebook threads related to this and you even responded to yourself with all these thoughtful follow-ups about how you and William Parker do what you do with no publicity. And you say, 'by the way, I don't hate rap! I've done collaborations there!' That must have been head-spinning for you.
MS: Yeah, it was. And of course I don't hate rap. (laughs) It's part of American history. But as a jazz musician, if I was doing rap, nobody would take it seriously. I doubt Pitchfork would do a review of that. If somebody's going to do an improvisational piano album, why would they go to a Met Gala dressed as a piano and have a publicist. I assume there's a publicist working the album- it went to NPR, Pitchfork and so on. I mean, if I tried to do heart surgery, it would not end up well. It's that simple and nobody would put up with it. (laughs) Of course he's free to do anything to do what he wants to do but people are just going to notice. It's just that simple.
PSF: Right, because of who he is. You had a satirical FB post about how you never played tuba before so how about some applause for doing that?
MS: (laughs) I forgot about that! I never experienced ANYTHING like that. So I really learned the power of things going viral, to put it mildly.
PSF: I think people also just like to see public spats like this, even if it's one-sided.
MS: I think that's true but I also think that people were kind of shocked by the directness of the language I used. I mean, none of it was for shock. When I originally got a call from a writer who talked me into it, I was like "I'm not going to do this. Who cares?" And then I started listening to it and I saw the photo from the Met Gala and something just exploded in my head. I mean, I have that capacity but I don't have a temper or anything. But occasionally if somebody just pushes me over the top and I can verbally explode like that and it happened with the typewriter. (laughs) And I think people were kind of taken by the intensity of it. It was honest but I think that really... Even if somebody disagreed with parts of it or agreed with parts of it, I think the communication aspect of it touched people whether it was negatively or positively.
PSF: Did you listen to it again after your initial post?
MS: No, no, no. Once was enough! (laughs) Life is stressful and if I'm going to listen to music, I want something that uplifts me and feeds my brain cells and puts me in a good space and I don't need to listen to something that doesn't uplift me or massage my brain cells the way they need to be. So, no.
PSF: You said to me via Messenger, "even though I am older, he and I are both making changes." What did you mean there?
MS: Well, I don't know him so all I can say is that I recall reading some of the literature or some of the stuff that he wrote about this and it seems to me from what I remember that he was really having problem. He didn't even want to call himself a rapper anymore and he's trying to get away from hip hop proper. And I read stuff that led me to believe that's having some type of midlife crisis of sorts. I mean, I'm not trying to get into his head and know what's going on, but it seemed to me that he wants to change but (he's) not sure of direction. He's trying things out. And it seemed to me, from something I read, that he was kind of not feeling... relevant in the hip hop area. Now, that's just what I got out of what I read. So, that to me was a midlife crisis.
Now, what I find interesting about that is, from what I remember, I looked at his net worth on Google and I think it was $35 million. So, whatever it really is, with a net worth of anything like that, you could go to your hobbies and stuff. It seems like that's something you would do not in public, especially if you're in the process of trying to find yourself.
Now I am not in any type of midlife crisis- I know exactly where I am and what I'm about and where I want to go. I'm within a whole different area that I'm dealing with. Within the jazz world, you usually don't get any kudos until you're almost dead. And I've been at this for decades and gotten noticed. You know, I've been recognized since the beginning but I've been fighting a jazz industry that looks at me like some kind of freak and outsider, which I guess I am, but at the same point... I think what I bring to the table is obvious so I expected more.
I don't even know if I want to be accepted by the jazz community in the way that, you know, like Wynton (Marsalis) or Terri Lynn Carrington is. This is not a criticism of Wynton or Terri Lynn Carrington--it's just when I hear Wynton Marsalis's name, I think of jazz at Lincoln Center and when I hear Terri Lynn Carrinton's name, I think of Berklee College of Music and in my mind, I want my music to be taken for whatever it is without any institution in jazz coming to mind.
I don't know if I want that type of thing because I kind of want to be an outsider, with my middle finger up to the jazz world. But at the same time, it's music. And even within the jazz community that I don't like, there are just a lot of basic music listeners that make music. So, on the level of me as a musician relating to people and presenting music, they're hopefully getting something out of it and hopefully there's an exchange between me and them. That's that. Of course, I crave it, on the highest level I could possibly have it. But without the institutional. I mean, I want the money. (laughs) So, on that level, I want the institutional support but also part of me wants to give the middle finger to all the aspects of the institution.
So my, if you want to call it, midlife crisis is over. It's really about positioning myself to get the fruits of the work that I've done for the last 40 years that I feel I haven't gotten the proper fruits for. You know, despite intense critical acclaim, I'm still an outsider, both by design and I don't feel that the jazz world's ready for me, or maybe it is. I don't know. Or WAS not ready for me. So my plight is keeping the same type of intensity and outsider credibility that I have but actually positioning myself to get some money. (laughs)
PSF: That's a difficult balancing act. How do you maintain that now?
MS: Well, I think I'm crazy on one level so I don't have to work at it. (laughs) I think one of my best attributes is that on one level, I don't care. Obviously I do care- I make statements about people and things in the press. So if I really didn't care, I would obviously be obvious to everything. But, there is a part of me that... just doesn't give a fuck. (laughs) So it's more about an aspect of leaning toward that. Luckily, I have some social skills. (laughs) And luckily, I'm not strung out on drugs and alcohol and all the other things that you can do if you're frustrated over years. And luckily, as far as I know, I'm healthy. So at this point, I think it's just a matter of keeping on. But jazz is... a very frustrating way of living. I can pretty much look at anybody's thing and even if its seems that they're doing really well, I can probably see where they're frustrated. That probably goes for everything and every walk of life but jazz has a massive buildup of frustration.
PSF: To pick up on a thread you were mentioning, you were saying how frustrating your work can be as a jazz musician. Are you able to commiserate much about this with other musicians?
MS: I've met few jazz musicians who don't have some type of bitterness. I would actually say "all" but that's not fair- I don't know all (of them). And even the nicest people who seem so upbeat about it, my experience has been that when I really talk to them, stuff comes out. Now, that's probably true in every field. But I just think what makes jazz so difficult is... the lack of outlets for jazz musicians to promote their work. It's basically that someone puts out an album, they hire a publicist and you're lucky if 8-10 places open up for it to be reviewed. How can the public get to know you then? I mean, there's no radio per se. There's college stations that play some jazz, maybe a couple times a week and there's a few jazz stations in some major cities, and NPR occasionally throws jazz a bone. But how can the public get to know the music if they're not being exposed to it? So of course there's the internet but if people aren't already into jazz, they're not going to go and read about it, I don't think.
I guess what I'm saying is there's just no infrastructure. That's the bottom line. So if there's no infrastructure, you're always having to get up and recreate yourself every day. Recreate the whole thing and start from scratch almost, no matter what you have done. But at least I knew that getting in. And that also gives it part of its challenge, to get your message out there regardless of the block that seems to be in society to do it. Just get your message out there somehow. That's actually kept me going. Kept me feeling like a trooper and like I'm on a mission. So I'm not complaining, I'm just saying...
And I guess that feeds into the Andre thing. What I saw was, me as a jazz musician, I've done tons of solo albums and there's people that think some of them are really great. But I mean, it doesn't matter what I think- of course I'm going to be into what I do. But I can feel that I've made a definite statement in history with some of these solo albums. And here comes somebody along who does a solo improvisational album and who's hyped an album that I feel that is just horrible. I was like, "what the fuck?" (laughs) Let alone what I think about my album, I just think of all the great jazz pianists that have done solo albums that nobody paid attention to whatsoever. And let's not forgot Keith Jarrett, who had one of his albums (The Koln Concert) as a massive seller back in the days when there actually was a record industry and it was a whole different paradigm. And I could talk at length about why that particular album did what it did at that time period but that's not germane to this conversation.
But apart from that, I can think of tons of jazz pianists who have done really beautiful solo albums. Not one of them would ever be invited to a Met Gala. And that's what it is. That's cool, but I just felt that society needed a warning, about that type of degradation or the degradation of putting out somebody with no skills at something and saying that they're just trying to experiment and they get presented that way, compared to people that can really do something. It almost felt to me like a reality TV show. No different. I'm not making dogmatic statements but it felt no different to me than... Donald Trump being worthy of being president because people have a false sense that he knows something about business because he's on a reality TV show. So it had the same feel that culture is degrading to that level where it felt like a reality TV type of situation. It's like this culture is at a very low level and it just needs a reminder that's nothing really wrong with working at a concept. (laughs) Like, you shouldn't be punished because you have ideas and you really work at them, you know? It's not about celebrity, it's not about net worth. It's not about how many records you sold. It's about... doing work and really trying to offer something to society and culture. I don't even like the word 'culture' and I don't like the word 'society' either. I don't want to say 'a gift back to the Godhead' but to the 'cosmos' might be the right word.
PSF: Since you brought it up, other than the Jarrett album and your own work, what are some solo piano albums do you recommend otherwise?
MS: I just wanna say I'm not a big fan of Jarrett's solo piece. (laughs) He does what he does, but it's just not my cup of tea. But I think the Solo Monk album from France (1954's Piano Solo) that he did- the early one with "'Round Midnight" on it and "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," I think that's an utter masterpiece. There's nothing higher than that. But I don't even know if it's about specific albums. Bud Powell I don't think has an entire solo album but he has a solo version of "Parisian Thoroughfare" and a couple of other tunes and they're state of the art. I was listening to a Claire Fisher album recently. He does "'Round Midnight" on it actually, but it's phenomenal and any number... (laughs) God, I don't even know where to begin with that. You know, Lennie Tristano did some tremendous (recordings), Sal Mosco did some tremendous solo work. It goes on and on. I've never heard a Kenny Barron solo album but I assume he's... I've heard him play solo live. I heard a Geri Allen solo live concert and I've never heard her do a solo album, but it was phenomenal. There were colors between her hands I've never heard before. It actually reminded me of the classical pianist Alicia de Larrocha, because I heard her live once and it was just stunning. She was playing Beethoven sonatas but the kind of colorization that she could get.. And I heard that with Geri Allen, getting the same kind of tone color Bud Powell could get. I've heard Mal Waldron do solos that are just... outstanding. And Cecil Taylor's solo albums from the '70s, like Air Above Mountains. They're monstrous albums. And it goes on and on and on and on.
So, if you're going to do a solo piano album... I mean, I guess Andre's album is not completely solo 'cause they have electronic effects... I don't know what that is, and there's somebody's voice before a song and I think if I remember, there was percussion on something. But if you're going to do a piano improvisational album, I mean, PLEASE be cognizant of the fact that there are people who really do this.
PSF: You were talking about how you balance yourself between being true to your muse and being a public figure who makes money and gets recognition. How do you balance those two things when you compose and record your work?
MS: I just wanna say that when I say that I want to make money, I've been making a living as a musician since 1990 so I want to BIG money! (laughs) I don't compromise or I don't think in terms of projects for money whatsoever. I believe that there are people who want to pay me for being myself, completely and utterly. So, I guess that type of acceptance, even though I want it, it has to come on my terms. Or I'd be willing to die without it, if that's the case. But especially at this point, I've done all kinds of things in my career. I mean, most of them weren't money grabs but there was a few of them that some people might think it's true, but they actually weren't. But I've done all kinds of things musically since I started playing in front of people when I was around 10 years old. So at this point in my life, I'm going to turn 65 this year and I ain't doing shit unless I wanna do it. At this point, I'm not someone who's for anybody or anything. I'm either into it or fuck it.
There is no really balancing act as far as I'm concerned. I'm of the mindset that people will pay me to be me. I mean, that actually ended up happening for Ornette Coleman. He was actually able to get that. He had really decent management and I think he was able to get the fees he wanted. And to some degree, that happened with Cecil Taylor but he never had the kind of management and team that Ornette had around him, but he was able to do really decent. He did alright.
I'm not really asking for much. I actually have no material things that I... I live a very sparse life. And I don't really need much to keep going but in this world, to be poor, you need a lot of money. (laughs) So I basically don't want to end up like 80 and my wife and I are not able to afford a nursing home. (laughs)
PSF: You of course have had connections to hip hop. Could you talk about that and how you've worked that into what you do?
MS: Right. Well, first of all, I want to say that I'm a hip hop fan. I moved to New York in '83 and I used to have an attitude and I used to hate hip hop. Before I moved here, I worked at a record store and used to make fun of.. this is before I moved to New York... the kids who came in and bought some of the early music. This is even before "The Message." Stuff that was just kind of pre-hip hop. And I just kind of thought it was barbaric actually. But then when I moved to New York, I was sitting in a cab one day and "The Message" by Grandmaster Flash played and I was transfixed by it. And anybody that follows me on social media know that in the '80s when I moved to New York, I became kind of a club kid. At night, I was hanging out in the dancehalls and a part of that type of club culture. So hip hop was a big part of that, among other things, like No Wave and European synth pop and '80s freestyle. But hip hop was a big part of that. I remember walking out of dance clubs and having kind of a fantasy of being a piano player with Run-DMC. I was just kind of drunk and having hyper gothic experiences. But I never though anything (like that would happen). I would just dance to hip hop for fun and I would go to the piano and I'm just gathering all these things together.
But during the early 2000's, my wife was really into trip hop, and she used to play Massive Attack and Tricky around the house all the time. She was like, "I could hear what you could do with this," and I was like (casually), "yeah, right..." It kind of make sense but then, all of a sudden, I started hearing that there were certain hip hop musicians that were really into me and DJ's too. I met DJ Spooky at a party once and I went up to him and I was just having a good time. And he just recognized me and he knew my albums and stuff and I was like, "WHAT?" And he was like, "yeah, we should work together." And I still didn't really think anything of it. Then I walk into a record store one day and Beans from Antipop Consortium actually was working in this place, and he started talking to me and he knew my records. I was kind of confused. (laughs) And they were all like, "we should do something together." So after a point, I was like, "hey, maybe they're right." And then I was working with Thirsty Ear (Records) and we got a call from Spring Heel Jack (UK DJ/producer duo) who were really into jazz and they wanted to do a hybrid experiment with jazz musicians and my wife was into Massive Attack and John Coxon from Spring Heel Jack had worked with Massive Attack... It all just kind of crystalized in my head. So I started working with DJ Spooky and I did my own electronica albums, which were basically Nu Bop (2002) and Equilibrium (2003) and Harmony Abyss (2004) and I did them with Flam, who was kind of the producer with DJ Spooky. So Antipop Consortium and I did an album together (Antipop vs. Matthew Shipp, 2003) and I did an album with El-P (High Water, 2004), so it was just kind of a natural unfolding. So it was a really fun period, a really intense period for me.
PSF: And to come back to your hip hop connections now, you're working with Kool Keith.
MS: Right, I haven't done a project like that for years but there's a private producer that put me and Kool Keith together and Tim Dahl plays bass on it and Weasel Walter is on it and the actual producer of it (Steven Bristol), he plays drums. So that's going to be coming out at some point soon. And I mean, I'm a big Kool Keith fan. Doctor Octagon is one of my favorite albums in music history. That was back in the period when I was out doing all that stuff and at the time, my wife was listening a lot. She was talking about DJ Shadow and I was listening to Entroducing.... a lot. That album made a big impact on my psyche also.
PSF: That's all I had unless you had something else to add.
MS: I'm feeling really good about where I am in the music. I feel I have a real relationship with the piano and it's gotten deeper and deeper and deeper over the years. And I'm feeling that it's not even a piano anymore. I'm feeling like I'm in touch with a crystal that can emit pure language, whatever that means to somebody. That's a very ambiguous metaphor, but I really feel like I've dug and dug and dug and dug for years and I feel like I've hit a vein of gold. At this point, I feel like my album The Cosmic Piano is within the realm of that vein of gold. And I'm just really grateful for the people who have listened to me and kept me going all those years, because I mean, I always say that I'm don't give a fuck but I do. (laughs) I do need listeners, I do need people that relate to the music. You know, I like to think that if I didn't have any (listeners), in a way, I would still continue. But I really love the fact that I've been able to share something and there's people that have wanted what I want to share. And those people have helped keep me going. And it's just great to be able to part of the lineage of this language. You know, there's so many great people who came before me. To be able to really delve into the language they did and come up with my own application and way of doing it. I feel like I'm in a family, you know? That's part of my essay, "Black Mystery School Pianists," and it deals with aspects of that.
I also feel that the music is in a new phase, that the planet is in need of harmonic alignment. A lot of things are off and I would like to think that the music can be a tool to help for that. I certainly am trying to dig deeper and deeper and find some type of universal truth. I mean, when I play a line on the piano, I'm more like a physicist than a musician. I'm not like trying to make music. I'm actually trying to come up with some equations that... realign cosmic forces. I mean, if the equation exists, it exists in and of itself. So cosmic forces are aligned just by virtue of the fact that you can come up with the equation. But.. the articulation of it in space and time and within the music industry and within society can possibly realign things. And I also think that to appreciate what I do, I don't think people need to know a lot about jazz, or avant garde jazz.
What I do is a vibration and I think that if people just open their minds, they relate or not relate to the vibration in itself. And I think that's a misnomer that before you buy my album, you need to buy Kind of Blue or A Love Supreme. I mean, a vibration is a vibration when it's emitted on the instrument and you can even bathe in it, or not. So, that's what I have to say.
