Matthew Shipp
Kinetic Process
World Premiere
Commissioned by Nameless Sound and The Rothko Chapel
For the Summer Solstice 2025
Two performances: 8:30am & noon.
Matthew Shipp (New York City) - piano, composer
Nameless Sound and The Rothko Chapel present a world premier commission by pianist and composer Matthew Shipp, one of the most important voices of jazz’s avant-garde since the 1980’s. Kinetic Process was composed especially for the Rothko Chapel, and for the occasion of the Summer Solstice.
Shipp’s personal language as a composer and pianist draws from a range of modernist influences in jazz and classical music, as well as from non-musical sources such as abstract expressionist painting. His sonic and rhythmic formulas result from a matrix of vibration and time. In addition to linear melodic shapes, they extend to form textures and densities. From a processes of kinetic intensity, harmonic layers and floating fields of sound emerge. Conversely, Rothko’s layers and fields of color create motion and intensity from the stillness of the canvas, where forms expand beyond its rectangular geometry and the wall, resonating within the building itself. Mark Rothko’s painted fields somehow resonate. They live in time, like sound, floating off the canvas by way of the viewers’ observation. Whereas the sonic resonances of Matthew Shipp’s piano create vibrating sculptures, forms made from the particles of air.
Where will these monumental forms, densities of sound and light, meet? How will they speak to each other? How will the sound move the eye. How will the eye orient the sound?
It's a joy to follow his ardent flow unfolding like a well-told surrealist narrative.
- New York Times
Shipp has helped define, with uncommon distinction, a fresh range of possibilities for contemporary pianism grounded in jazz tradition - its raises complex questions and yet invites listeners in.
- Wall Street Journal
This concert is funded in part by the City of Houston Through Houston Arts Alliance.
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