IVO PERELMAN Set to Release New Trio of Albums -
The Other Edge, Two Men Walking, and Book of Sound
Available April 15 via Leo Records
"Ivo Perelman is a renowned powerhouse amid his gusty
and highly energized mode of attack" - All About Jazz
In his latest, triple-pronged attack on artistic complacency, the hyper-expressive saxophonist Ivo Perelman
employs the tactic of accretion: in duo, trio, and quartet formats, he
displays not only his wide artistic range but also his exceptional
capacity for subtle variety. Each of these albums can stand completely
on its own; taken together, they offer a snapshot of this particular
juncture in Perelman's artistic evolution. (All three were recorded
between October 2013 and January 2014.) These albums also extend the
rarely paralleled burst of creative activity that has seen Perelman - a
productive musician and graphic artist, even in his "slow" periods -
release nearly 20 albums in the last four years.
"I had an intense creative
frenzy maybe 15 years ago," Perelman has recalled, referencing a
two-year span in the mid-90s during which he released a dozen albums.
"And now it's happening again, after spending a lot of time practicing
some new ideas involving my mouthpiece, tonguing, sound production - the
saxophone in general."
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| The Other Edge |
In contrast to that earlier period, Perelman now works almost exclusively
with a small pool of collaborators - a testament to the challenge of
finding simpatico collaborators for his daring approach to
improvisation. To achieve variety for the listener, as well as novelty
and inspiration for himself, the Brazilian-born saxophonist mixes and
matches from within this pool of artists so that his recordings almost
never feature the exact same personnel and instrumentation. Each album
shuffles the deck: one features this bassist with
that drummer; or both those artists with piano; or piano, bass, and a
different drummer; or sax and drums only, or maybe with two bassists
added. The faces remain familiar, but the group portrait changes with
each new project.
That philosophy makes this
latest set of releases especially intriguing, in that they show
Perelman's willingness to "regroup," in a sense - to re-investigate some
of the musical relationships that have proved particularly satisfying.
One album reunites him with the Matthew Shipp Trio,
with whom he previously recorded in 2012; another re-creates the trio
that last met on the album Cama Da Terra, in 1996. The third release
allows him to solidify his partnership with violist Mat Maneri,
a new star within the saxophonist's tiny galaxy. "Each of my projects
holds a set of parameters that will never be repeated," Perelman says,
explaining his relentless quest to elude creative stasis. But in certain
cases - when there is "so much potential," in his words - he's more
than willing to challenge his own rule.
That was certainly the case for Two Men Walking,
the new album of Perelman-Maneri duets, which follows close on the
heels of their first meeting in May 2013; that recording (which also
featured pianist Shipp) produced an album of music used on the
soundtrack of the Brazilian film A Violent Dose Of Anything.
After that session, says Perelman, "I felt like, Wow! I've got to play
with this guy again! I felt a kinship in our thinking. He's like an
alter ego, almost telepathic. It's like each of us is playing both
instruments." Perelman has a special fondness for the string family,
having himself played cello (the viola's big brother) as a youth, before
taking up the saxophone: "I find I can mutate, like a chameleon, in the
presence of string instruments. . . . And I find tenor and viola in
particular is a match made in heaven."
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| Two Men Walking |
Neil
Tesser in the liner notes writes, "Perelman and Maneri adore the
highest (altissimo) register of their instruments, which further
tightens their specific partnership - that, and the fact that each has
studiously developed the ability to produce these difficult, dangerous, and
easily maligned octaves." Indeed, one of the distinguishing features of
this partnership is the ability of the tenor and viola to complement
each other in this extreme range of their instruments - as if they in
fact inhabited that sonic aerie by right, and descended into the
"normal" registers of their instruments for variety, instead of the
other way around. (Maneri learned to explore the outer reaches of
timbre, as well as melody and structure, from his father and mentor, the
iconoclastic saxophonist Joe Maneri; their 1996 album Three Men Walking inspired the title of the current project.)
In contrast to his recent alliance with Maneri, Perelman has had plenty of experience with the artists joining him on The Other Edge - most recently on its namesake, the 2013 album The Edge
(also on Leo Records). The quartet heard on both discs comprises the
members of Matthew Shipp's trio. Perelman has recorded more than a dozen
albums with pianist Shipp, and has often performed with him in varying
contexts; Shipp's bassist (Michael Bisio) and drummer (Whit Dickey)
have each recorded separately with the saxophonist as well. The second
production by this foursome results in a spectacularly eclectic
collection, with wholly improvised works as likely to reference classic
swing as Balinese gamelan, delicate rubato harmonics, or American Indian
stomps.
Shipp again joins Perelman on Book Of Sound, their reunion in a trio setting with bassist William Parker,
the acclaimed bassist and new-jazz activist with whom Perelman and
Shipp each played early in their professional careers. "In creating the
finished product," liner-notes writer Neil Tesser explains, "Perelman
allowed himself only one of the plenary options available to a modern
recording artist: he altered the order in which the tracks were
recorded. . . . Book Of Sound presents what amounts to one
large composition: a multi-movement, album-length piece, tectonically
balanced between exuberance and introspection, light and dark." The
titles of the various "movements," all of which reference ancient Latin
aphorisms, further binds these disparate performances into a single
work.
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| Book of Sound |
About Ivo Perelman:
Born in 1961 in São Paulo,
Brazil, Perelman was a classical guitar prodigy who orbited a series of
other instruments before finally gravitating to the tenor saxophone. His
initial influences, cool jazz saxophonists Stan Getz and Paul Desmond,
could hardly have presaged the galvanic, iconoclastic improvisations
that have become Perelman's stock-in-trade. But those early influences
helped shape the romantic warrior at the heart of his most heated
musical adventures.
In 1981, Perelman entered
Berklee College of Music in Boston, where he focused on the mainstream
masters of the tenor sax, to the exclusion of such pioneering
avant-gardists as Albert Ayler, Peter Brötzmann, and John Coltrane - all
of whom would later be cited as precedents for Perelman's own work. He
left Berklee in 1983 and moved as far from Boston as possible - to Los
Angeles, where he studied with mainstream vibraphonist Charlie Shoemake,
at whose monthly jam sessions Perelman discovered his penchant for
post-structure improvisation. "I would go berserk, just playing my own
thing," he explains now. Emboldened by this approach, Perelman began to
research the free-jazz saxists who had come before him. So Perelman
undertook a survey of post-60s avant-gardists. In 1989 he recorded the
first of more than 50 albums now under his own name, featuring a number
of mainstream and Brazilian jazz musicians, and a program comprising
traditional Brazilian folk melodies. But even then, he recalls "moments
of real free playing, and I decided I liked it. I finally moved to New
York and hung out with like-minded players, and I knew I had found my
crowd."
Ivo Perelman
The Other Edge · Two Men Walking · Book of Sound
Leo Records · Release Date: April 15, 2014
For more information on Ivo Perelman, please visit: IvoPerelman.com
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