"A
modern day saxophone colossus" (Echoes); "The finest improvisational
genius of our time" (Bop-N-Jazz); "one of the great saxophone
virtuosi and exponents of spontaneous composition to have emerged in the past
three decades" (Jazzwise) - these represent just some of the accolades
that pour in with each new set of releases by Ivo Perelman. This extraordinary
artist continues to map new territory for his chosen instrument, the tenor
saxophone. And by regularly releasing multiple albums documenting his
explorations, he provides listeners with multiple avenues into his music.
But the
release of five albums at once (all available on Leo Records) signifies a
herculean effort even for Perelman. What's more, each of these albums presents
a different array of musical cohorts, a different format, and a different
concept. "Interestingly," Perelman notes, "this grouping of
albums will feature all of the musicians that I've been collaborating with in
the past several years"--a list that comprises violist Mat Maneri,
keyboardists Matthew Shipp and Karl Berger, bassists Michael Bisio and Joe
Morris (who also plays acoustic guitar), and drummers Gerald Cleaver and Whit
Dickey.
Three of
these albums--the duo discs Corpo and Blue, and the quartet effort Soul--were
recorded in a two-week period; they exploit a major theoretical breakthrough
that Perelman experienced on an extended stay in Brazil, the nation of his
birth. In Autumn of 2015, he traveled to São Paolo to oversee a major
exhibition of his work in the visual arts. (Perelman spends approximately half
his time producing highly-sought drawings and paintings.) He ended up staying
nearly half a year, far removed from the daily grind of his life in New York,
and this hiatus "put my brain in a different mode," he said upon his
return. "I got away from the need to 'achieve' something. I relaxed."
He also
began to revisit the serialist (12-tone) composers--Arnold Schönberg, Alban
Berg, Anton Webern--which led to an important realization. The core tenet of
serialism is that each note in the scale exerts equal weight; from that,
Perelman focused on the corollary that each interval--the distance between any
pitch and the one that follows--should be treated with the same egalitarianism.
"The intervallic system has become my dogma now," he explains in the
liner notes to Corpo. "Every interval is of equal importance...I don't
have to be modal, or tonal, or atonal. All the intervals, a third or a seventh
or a fifth, these all have the same importance for me now." This has led
to new practice regimens and a corresponding emancipation of Perelman's already
fluid approach to melody as well as timbre.
Corpo, the
first album recorded by Perelman upon his return to New York, stars pianist
Matthew Shipp, the saxophonist's longtime musical soul-mate. In 14 tracks of
moderate length, the disc offers evidence of Perelman's new "intervallic
system," as well as a purified distillation of an ever-evolving musical
partnership that has been compared to Brubeck/Desmond and Coltrane/Tyner. Says
pianist Shipp, in his liner essay for the album: "Corpo is the ultimate
coming together of everything Ivo and I have been working on for years. . . .
the apotheosis of the Perelman/Shipp duo cosmos. Our [previous album] Callas
was a breakthrough for us; Corpo is the ultimate flowering."
One week
after Corpo, Perelman and Shipp returned to the studio; they were joined by
bassist Michael Bisio and drummer Whit Dickey to record Soul, which, as its
name suggests, constitutes a companion piece to Corpo (the Portuguese word for
"body"). More than simply "fleshing out" the Perelman-Shipp
duo, the added musicians - whose many sessions with Perelman have given them
intimate knowledge of how his music takes shape, in the studio, and without
pre-existing blueprints for the improvisations - effortlessly integrate
themselves into these performances. "Bisio underscores the music with
supple muscle, finding valuable notes in between those that make up Shipp's
chords," writes liner annotator Neil Tesser, while "Dickey adds color
and texture that peer into the swirl of melodies and light them from
within."
Then, one
week after the Soul date, Perelman met with bassist/guitarist Joe Morris to
record Blue. The album marks the first time Perelman, despite all the shifting
contextual landscapes shaping his career, has ever recorded in a duo of tenor
sax and unamplified guitar. "With an instrument that has resonance, where
the notes have a long decay," Perelman explains, "you're always being
fed and nourished as the sound remains in mid-air. But with acoustic guitar,
the moment that Joe lifts his finger from the string, the sound dies. You're
all alone. So that was the challenge for me, to play with something so
soft-spoken." None of the tracks are actual 12- or 16-bar blues
compositions, of course, since nothing was composed prior to what took place in
the studio; rather, says the musician/painter, "It has the feeling of the
color blue," in all the variations of that hue.
The
Hitchhiker marks another "first" for Perelman; it pairs him with Karl
Berger on vibraphone to mark the only time in the saxophonist's career that he
has recorded with that instrument. Perelman first worked with Berger - the
pioneering composer and arranger of new music (within and beyond jazz) and
co-founder, with Ornette Coleman, of the Creative Music Studio in Woodstock,
New York - on Reverie (2014), but on that project, Berger played piano. The
vibraphone has a reduced potential for the thick chords available to a pianist,
so in that sense, says Perelman, "he's giving me a condensed scheme"
of harmonic potentialities. A possible pitfall? No; it only "made me focus
more," says Perelman.
The final
album in this release, The Breaking Point, continues Perelman's highly
successful partnership with violist Mat Maneri, but this time in a quartet
format; previous Perelman-Maneri matchups had occurred only in duo or trio
settings. "I had in my mind what it would sound like in a more powerful
setting, with drums," says Perelman. With bassist Joe Morris and drummer
Gerald Cleaver, the disc constitutes yet one more rarity for Perelman: in his
entire discography, this is the third time he has ever employed the
"traditional" free-jazz format of bass and drums supporting two
front-line melody instruments. In the progression of its seven tracks, the
album functions as a sort of expanded symphonic suite.
Ivo Perelman
· Corpo, Soul, Blue, The Hitchhiker, The Breaking Point / Leo
Records · Release Date: May 20, 2016
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