Gig Alert: Matthew Shipp & Darius Jones

Matthew Shipp & Darius Jones
“Zillo Valla”
Playing Wednesday at The Jazz Standard (116 E. 27th St., Gramercy)
Get: Tickets ($20) | Directions

The big ideas behind Cosmic Lieder, a new album by pianist Matthew Shipp and saxophonist Darius Jones, are summed up in the album’s pun-intended title. (We all know what a leader is, and lieder are classical European art songs written by Schubert and others.) This duo’s future-jazz is no Schubert, but there is a contemporary classical sound to Shipp and Jones' improvisations, and a vocal quality to Jones’ screaming sax. Bolstered by Shipp’s low chord blocks, which one reviewer described as “boulder-like,” “Zillo Valla” is deep listening: a slow-moving tone-poem that hits notes both desolate and sublime.