2016 · Album
Live in Sant’Anna Arresi, 2004
Recorded 2004, Ai confini tra Sardegna e Jazz festival, Sant'Anna Arresi, Sardinia · AUM Fidelity · Produced by Not specified
Two Voices in Sardinia, Twelve Years Later
Ware's fiery blowing contrasts with Shipp's fragile, otherworldly sound from inside the piano.
In 2004, David S. Ware and Matthew Shipp played a forty-minute improvised duo set at the Ai confini tra Sardegna e Jazz festival in Sant'Anna Arresi, Sardinia. The performance wasn't released until 2016, arriving as the second volume in the David S. Ware Archive Series, a retrospective project that pulled significant recordings from the saxophonist's vault. That twelve-year gap between performance and release matters less than what actually happened in that room: two musicians with decades of collaboration behind them, stripped down to saxophone and piano, with nothing but each other to play off.
Shipp's approach here is restless and textural. He spends considerable time under the piano's lid, creating sounds that exist somewhere between prepared piano technique and pure exploration—fragile bursts that feel almost accidental, as if he's discovering them rather than executing them. Against this, Ware plays with the kind of intensity he's known for, his tone cutting through Shipp's quieter moments and pushing into the space Shipp leaves open. The two don't follow a melody or predetermined structure; instead, they build something coherent from scratch, and that coherence—the way the set holds together as a large-scale work rather than a sequence of ideas—is what makes this worth hearing.
This isn't a peak-era Ware recording, and it's not meant to be. It's a document of two mature players working in real time, without a net. If you've followed Ware's work, this confirms what you already know about his commitment to free improvisation. If you haven't, start with something like Spiritually Advanced (1990) first.
