Before the World

Last updated
Before the World
Before the World Cover.jpeg
Live album by Matthew Shipp
Released 1997
Recorded June 14 & 15, 1995
Venue Akademie der Künste, Berlin
Genre Jazz
Length68:24
Label FMP
Producer Jost Gebers
Matthew Shipp chronology
The Flow of X
(1997)
Before the World
(1997)
By the Law of Music
(1997)

Before the World is an album by jazz pianist Matthew Shipp which was recorded live in 1995 and released on the FMP label. This was his first recorded solo album, although Symbol Systems was released before.

Matthew Shipp American musician

Matthew Shipp is an American pianist, composer, and bandleader.

Free Music Production (FMP) is a German record company and label specializing in free jazz.

<i>Symbol Systems</i> album by Matthew Shipp

Symbol Systems is an album by American jazz pianist Matthew Shipp which was recorded in 1995 and became the first release on No More, a label founded by producer Alan Schneider. It was the first solo piano released by Shipp but was recorded five months after Before the World, a live performance which was released later.

Contents

Background

Shipp was invited to perform a solo concert during the Workshop Freie Musik '95 at The Akademie der Künste, in Berlin. He was informed that the concert would be recorded. A first for him, Shipp was "giddy" with the novelty of the experience, so before he played he conditioned his mind to "sound good for the recording." [1] As he was quoted in the liner notes, "Since this was my first solo concert, to get my hands really accustomed to using the whole piano I actually worked on some things from the classical literature—baroque stuff mostly. That got me thinking in some new directions, and now I really want to work at it." [2]

Reception

Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic Star full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar empty.svg [3]
The Penguin Guide to Jazz Star full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar empty.svg [4]

In his review for AllMusic, Thom Jurek states "Many of the themes and schematics here reveal themselves as fundamentals of or 'bases' for later works." [3] The JazzTimes review by Willard Jenkins says about Shipp that the concert "displays his enormous facility at the keyboard. From a ripple to a scream, Shipp is quite literally all over the piano, though he never chooses to overwhelm with simple technique just for the sake of illustrating his capacity." [5]

AllMusic online music database

AllMusic is an online music database. It catalogs more than 3 million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musical artists and bands. It launched in 1991, predating the World Wide Web.

JazzTimes is an American magazine devoted to jazz. Published 10 times a year, it was founded in Washington, D.C. in 1970 by Ira Davidson Sabin (1928–2018) as a newsletter called Radio Free Jazz. Sabine founded Radio Free Jazz to complement his Washington, D.C. record store that he founded in 1962. As a newsletter, it informed consumers of the latest jazz releases and provided jazz broadcasters with news and backstories related to playlists.

Track listing

All compositions by Matthew Shipp
  1. "Before #1" – 32:44
  2. "Before #2" – 5:42
  3. "Before #3" – 3:42
  4. "Before #4" – 4:09
  5. "Before #5" – 22:07

Personnel

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References

  1. Matthew Shipp: Traversing The Regions Of The Mind by Lyn Horton at All About Jazz
  2. Original Liner Notes by K. Leander Williams
  3. 1 2 Jurek, Thom. Matthew Shipp – Before the World: Review at AllMusic . Retrieved March 14, 2014.
  4. Cook, Richard; Brian Morton (2008). The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD. The Penguin Guide to Jazz (9th ed.). London: Penguin. p. 1293. ISBN   0141034017.
  5. Before the World review by Willard Jenkins at JazzTimes