I’m still in Austin for another full day of panels and parties, but I wanted to take a minute to post about my interivew with Matthew Shipp, which has just gone live on At Length today.  We started talking about his new album but the conversation quickly got deep and awesome.

Shipp talked to me about a certain sort of mystical philosophy that underpins his music, and it’s one that I have long found fascinating.   And it’s reflected in the album’s title, 4D, a reference to multidimensionality of the sort the Cubists, the Theosophists and a host of science fiction writers all tapped into.  Anyway, it would’ve been right up my alley if I was talking to some random dude on the street, but seeing as how it was Matthew Shipp, one of the finest musicians in jazz or any genre, was a real treat.

As a side note, the first real jazz show I ever saw was the David S. Ware Quartet with Matthew Shipp at the Cat’s Cradle in Chapel Hill, and it was that show that made me fall in love with the genre, and understand what playing free was all about.

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