Look for this feelgood Shirley Scott archive release, a Strata East reissue, One For Me on new Gilles Peterson label, Arc Records. ''Focusing on curiosities and gems from the basement,'' according to the label, release date is 22 May. From the great Scott on organ here with saxophonist Harold Vick, Billy Higgins on drums and Jimmy Hopps whacking the cowbell and completing the line-up. Scott wrote most of the tunes – Vick the remainder.
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An event release for anyone who loves avant solo piano, we certainly do round here, 'Void Equation' from The Piano Equation by Matthew Shipp is streaming ahead of the album's release by drummer Whit Dickey's new label Tao Forms on 22 May.
Shipp habitually leaves your expectations about what improvising is confounded and makes you rethink everything. I last caught him live back in 2011 when the American innovator played a high wire summit at London club the Vortex with one of the club’s most popular regular performers the great saxophonist and innovator Evan Parker during a two-day residency. And so it was on that occasion as he layered coat after coat of chordal texture that Parker responded to with notes coming thick and fast.
Shipp for many years has been seen as one of the key improvisers taking the music forward by creating a language of his own, at once very abstract yet tender. Get in the zone first by going back to his masterpiece from 2018, Zero. Stephen Graham