The Ivo Perelman Reissue Campaign Ends

The last 14 of his Leo Records releases are out now!

This email is being sent to you on July 4, a US holiday celebrating independence.

Back in April, we began the second phase of the campaign to digitally reissue the catalog of legendary avant-garde label Leo Records. We started the reissue program last year, putting more than 100 crucial titles by free jazz and improvised music legends like Anthony Braxton, Cecil Taylor, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Amina Claudine Myers, Evan Parker, Joëlle Léandre and more. We rescued amazing records that had been out of print for decades, like Braxton’s Quartet (London) 1985, Quartet (Coventry) 1985, and Quartet (Birmingham) 1985, and Taylor’s Live In Bologna and Live In Vienna.

With that initial effort complete, we decided to devote our attention to just one artist: Brazilian tenor saxophonist Ivo Perelman, who released almost 70 albums on Leo between 1997 and 2019. These included collaborations with musicians like Rashied Ali, William Parker, Borah Bergman, Mat Maneri, Gerald Cleaver, Whit Dickey, and most of all Matthew Shipp. More than 30 of Perelman’s Leo discs feature Shipp, either as straight sax-piano duos or as part of trios or quartets. The creative relationship they’ve built over the course of more than three decades is one of the deepest in avant-garde music, and continues to yield stunning results every time they enter the studio or take the stage together.

This month, we’re reissuing the last 14 Ivo Perelman titles on Leo Records, including a seven-volume set of loosely connected live and studio recordings:

Live In Brussels is a double-disc Perelman/Shipp duo set; Live In Baltimore adds drummer Jeff Cosgrove and consists of a single long track; Philosopher’s Stone features Perelman, Shipp and trumpeter Nate Wooley; Heptagon is a quartet set with bassist William Parker and drummer Bobby Kapp; Scalene features drummer Joe Hertenstein; and Octagon is a quartet set without Shipp but with Wooley, bassist Brandon Lopez, and drummer Gerald Cleaver. You could perhaps think of Octagon as a companion piece to Ivo and Nate’s three duo discs on Burning Ambulance Music.

We’re also reissuing a pair of albums on which Perelman duets with bass clarinet players: Kindred Spirits with Rudi Mahall, and Spiritual Prayers with Jason Stein.

For something completely different, try the four volumes in the Strings series: Strings 1 features viola player Mat Maneri and violinists Mark Feldman and Jason Kao Hwang; on Strings 2, Perelman and Maneri connect with cellist Hank Roberts and reeds player Ned Rothenberg; Strings 3 is a Perelman/Maneri/Nate Wooley trio encounter; and Strings 4 features those three, plus Shipp.

And finally, we’ve got two massive Perelman/Shipp duo sets. Oneness is a 3CD set featuring 33 tracks ranging in length from just 1:17 to 7:36, and Efflorescence is a 4CD set with 49 tracks, mostly in the four- to five-minute range and all named after flowers.

Ivo Perelman is more than just an artist I admire. He’s a good guy, and a friend. And I hope sincerely that you’ll enjoy some of these amazing records.

And in August, we’ll be starting a new phase, reissuing the hundreds of albums by avant-garde artists from Russia that Leo has put out over the decades. That’s gonna be fascinating, so keep an eye out.

If you’re a free subscriber, today’s newsletter ends here. Come back on Tuesday for an interview with violinist Darragh Morgan about his new album For Violin And Electronics, Volume II. Behind the paywall, paying subscribers will find not the usual collection of intriguing links, but some thoughts from me on the value of criticism and of writing about art generally. See you there.