Matt Mitchell: Fiction

Of the new emerging generation of US jazz pianists, Matt Mitchell is one of the most sought after, as his ongoing stints with big guns Dave Douglas and Tim Berne attest. But whereas his contemporaries have elected to make their "own name" debuts in the solo piano format, Mitchell has taken a path decidedly less travelled: as part of a duo with drummer Ches Smith. The information that these raucous études were originally conceived by Mitchell as warm-up exercises to challenge himself technically is not initially encouraging, but out of that apparently dry academic ambition has emerged, with the addition of Smith's punkish drumming, a piano record quite unlike any other. Most civilians will be utterly repelled, but some, particularly other musicians, will hear it as dispatches from a new frontier. mattmitchell.us