Ivo Perelman: A Baker's Dozen +1

14 reissued titles by the saxophonist

The ongoing Leo Records reissue campaign continues this week, as does our excavation of Brazilian tenor saxophonist Ivo Perelman’s nearly 70 albums for the label. This batch, all of which are from 2015-2016, capture him in a period of relentless productivity, and with one exception they are bundled into two series.

The one stand-alone record is Corpo, a duo album with pianist Matthew Shipp. But even that is a companion piece to Soul, a quartet record with Shipp, bassist Michael Bisio, and drummer Whit Dickey. (I talked about Soul last month.) “Corpo” means “body” in Portuguese, and “Body and Soul” is of course a standard permanently identified with Coleman Hawkins, a saxophonist to whom Perelman — like pretty much everyone who’s ever picked up the horn — owes much. There’s some extremely beautiful ballad playing on this disc, as the track above indicates.

The rest of this week’s releases are divided into two batches, like I said, because Perelman decided to release them that way.

The Art Of The Improv Trio is a six-volume series, linked by concept though the personnel on each disc is different. Volume 1 features Karl Berger, better known (to me anyway) as a vibraphonist, on piano, and Gerald Cleaver on drums. Volume 2 brings in Mat Maneri on viola, and Whit Dickey is behind the kit — an unusual combination that yields very interesting results. Volume 3 features Shipp and Cleaver. Volume 4 offers a more conventional lineup, with William Parker on bass and Cleaver again on drums. Volume 5 and Volume 6 feature the same three musicians, but with a difference; Cleaver is on drums for both, and the third man is Joe Morris, but on Volume 5 he’s playing electric guitar, and on Volume 6 (a rarity in Perelman’s catalog — it’s a live recording) he’s on bass.

Because the point is to document the interaction between the three players, the individual tracks don’t have titles; they’re just labeled “Part 1” through “Part” however many a given disc happens to have. I understand the conceptual logic behind this choice, but it’s a little disappointing, since Perelman’s track titles on past albums have often been very creative and thought-provoking. (It’s also worth noting that these are not raw documents. Having worked on albums with him myself, I know that although all the music is freely improvised, Perelman does sequence the tracks quite carefully.)

The second series of albums is collectively called The Art Of Perelman-Shipp, which should tell you what to expect. But while each album does feature Ivo Perelman and Matthew Shipp, they’re mostly not duo discs, and each also has an individual title. They are named for Saturn and six of its many moons: Titan, Tarvos, Pandora, Hyperion, Rhea, and Dione.

Volume 1: Titan features bassist William Parker; Volume 2: Tarvos features drummer Bobby Kapp; Volume 3: Pandora features Parker and Whit Dickey; Volume 4: Hyperion brings in bassist Michael Bisio; Volume 5: Rhea is a quartet album with Bisio and Dickey; Volume 6: Saturn is a duo album; and Volume 7: Dione is an encounter with drummer Andrew Cyrille that kicks off with a fantastic drum solo, as you’ll hear above. You might notice that the sequencing is a little weird. I certainly did. Shouldn’t Saturn be Volume 1, establishing the baseline from which each of the other records deviate? And I feel like that might have been the plan at one point, because Saturn’s catalog number is LR 786 and the rest of the series are numbered LR 794 through 799. It’s a mystery…

Tom Burris reviewed the entire series for the Free Jazz Blog in 2017; Part 1 is here, and Part 2 is here.

All of these albums relate to each other, but each is completely different from the rest. Ivo Perelman is on a lifelong musical journey, dropping us periodic postcards along the way. Head to ivoperelmanleo.bandcamp.com to listen and buy.

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