By Eyal Hareuveni, Sammy Stein, Gary Chapin, Tom Burris, and Paul Acquaro
In 2021, the prolific tenor sax player celebrated his 60th birthday with a
major project, a nine-volume box, Brass And Ivory Tales (Fundacja Sluchaj,
2021), seven years in the making, and pairing Perelman with nine like-minded pianists. The improvised dialogues were often the first formal meeting
between the Perelman and the pianists and the instant and rapidly evolving
synergy was fresh and rewarding. Perelman focuses on camaraderie in his
creative process and excels in maintaining his individuality while matching
the idiosyncratic style of each of his partners.
In 2022 Perelman had released another magnum opus, the 12-volume Reed Raptures
in Brooklyn, in which he meets and improvises this time with 12 reeds players, most
of them for the first time. In fact, Perelman seems to be enjoying this approach as has plans to release another box set that
documents one-on-one recordings with guitarists. Reed Raptures in
Brooklyn is a celebration of the sax (ten different ones) and clarinets
(three different ones) family, recorded over six months in 2021. These
meetings cover a kaleidoscopic range of sound and offer another testament
to Perelman’s dynamic musical evolution.
With Joe Lovano:
The fourteen tracks of Perelman and Joe Lovano demonstrate the different
styles of each player, here succeeding in developing a dialogue that
features sharp, shared phrasing and often intense, creatively interwoven
episodes. Lovano demonstrates his versatility, egged on and encouraged by
Perelman’s delirious and, at times, profoundly evocative playing. Creative
interludes flow from blues-infused riffs, walking-paced marches, and
dramatic, high-reaching held notes making for tone poems that interweave,
switch the emphasis, and add color to phrasing, which only two musicians
intensely listening and responding to each other can produce. Contrasts
between the atmosphere on different tracks, from slower, whimsical melodic
exchanges to dramatic contrasts, demonstrate that this pairing elevates
both musicians’ playing to new heights. (Sammy Stein)
With Tim Berne:
Sometimes it feels like each duet creates a new space, with new rules, and
new physical laws; sometimes it feels like Evo is entering the “world” of
his interlocutor. Tim Berne’s compositions are famed and beloved, and his
free improv is equally admired (see his Paraphrase sets) and equally a
product of his unique voice. This set of five-edged conversations
(arguments? contretemps?) sees Berne spending a lot of time in the jaggedy
upper extensions of the saxophone—though his tendency to go from there to a
low, low contemplative thought is kind of heartbreaking—and Ivo is happy to
join him there. I’m sure others will have commented on the uncanny ability
of Perelman and friends to reflect back at other (through imperfect
mirrors) motifs, themes, moods. They whip and wend like birds in a
murmuration. A saxophone dance with no “primas.” (Gary Chapin)
With David Murray:
David Murray plays exclusively the bass clarinet on one channel, while Perelman
is on the other. Murray has one of the best bass clarinet voices ever, and
it sometimes takes a spare setting like this to appreciate. From the first
few seconds, I was loving just the sound of his horn. He’s also got one of
the better dry senses of humor in our music. There’s almost this sense that
Murray is laying a path, and Perelman is happy to play Alice to Murray’s rabbit.
They chase each other around various settings, with wild outcries and
celebratory yawps. They are having a great time on this one. I smiled a
lot. (Gary Chapin)
With Lotte Anker:
Danish alto and soprano sax player Lotte Anker is the only female and
non-American sax player here, but although this is her first meeting with
Perelman both share similar aesthetics. Both are fearless and imaginative,
kind of stream-of-consciousness, free improvisers who often frame their
improvisations into instant, loose compositions. The opening, 90 seconds of
“Eight” show how Anker and Perelman can crystalize their camaraderie into a
touching ballad. The following pieces are much longer pieces are also much
more fiery and energetic, but so is the rapport of Anker and Perelman, both
often complement each other’s ideas, interweave their voices and explore a
playful and harmonious balance between Perleman’s higher ranges of the
tenor sax and Anker’s lower ranges of her alto and soprano. Anker often
adds lyrical, melodic veins or hauntingly abstract musings into the
intense, energetic dialogues, as on “Six” or “Three”, taking this meeting
into deeper spiritual regions. (Eyal Hareuveni)
With Ken Vandermark:
Ken Vandermark brought his clarinet to his first meeting with Perelman.
They play a set of twelve brief pieces, exploring an idea with short but
dense, precisely matching phrases, exhausting their options and with no
attachment moving to the next one. These eloquent, balanced improvisations
swing between spirited, urgent discourse and lyrical and compassionate
musings, almost chamber ones (check “Thirteen”). Hrayr Attarian, who wrote
the insightful liner notes to this box set, wrote that Vandermark and
Perelman’s dynamics are “musical equivalents of a cross between freestyle
poetry and flash fiction”. You may also think about this meeting as a
heated and vibrant conversation between kindred souls who have a lot to
share and unburden in a short while, with extended breathing techniques and
an acrobatic demonstration of circular phrasing, squawks with honks, even
if Vandermark and Perelman often have dissonant perspectives. Given their
immediate and deep rapport, Vandermark and Perelman just began to explore
the potential of such collaboration. (Eyal Hareuveni)
With Roscoe Mitchell:
Roscoe Mitchell also sticks exclusively to the low end, playing bass sax.
This is the only recording that Perelman left Brooklyn to record, and we should
be glad he did. It’s a grand phenomenon for me that, as I plow through my
50s, to be reminded of things that I’ve forgotten. Not forgotten exactly. I
hadn’t forgotten how good Roscoe Mitchell could be, but I had forgotten
what it felt like to get a first listen to him being one of the most
amazing creative musicians of all time. Yeah, I know what I said. These
three tracks are a joy. Roscoe plays the bass track with a strategy. His
game—a long game—is made of low pitches dropped at even intervals, at a not
raucous pace. Perelman skitters over him, and you can hear, sometimes, that
Perelman is trying to tempt Mitchell to flight, but Roscoe is not having
any. (disclaimer: I don't know for a fact that this is what either were
thinking. It's an impression.) And his persistence—in comedy they call it
committing to the bit—his ongoing, breath paced desultory rhythmic
minimalism becomes something transformational. A slow process over time
that you don’t always notice because Perelman is doing some very cool stuff
above. But when Roscoe, about halfway through, shifts to more melodic
phrases, the satisfaction via contrast is extraordinary. An amazing set.
(Gary Chapin)
With James Carter:
The Carter-Perelman pairing, with Carter on baritone, is ebullient and
dynamic. Carter brings his range of styles to the fore, and the joy of this
pairing is palpable as they come together, drift apart and then slam with
such force the air trembles. Carter is controlled, Perelman more
spontaneous, but equally, he listens and changes tack several times to
align with Carter's dynamic, beautiful playing style. Carter’s
blaring baritone is matched by Perelman's equally fiery explosions
and tonal responses. There are fleeting echoes of classical compositions
intertwined with immense improvised sections throughout which the pair
maintain an intimate, witty conversation infused with delight. In a few
places, Carter lets rip some rock-infused blasts, which Perelman responds
to by allowing Carter to play solo before dropping his reply into the
pattern. This is a remarkable and provocative pairing, demonstrating
Perelman’s versatility in adapting his playing to allow a fellow musician
to bask in the delight of improvisation and doing so himself. From diverse
streams, the pair come together in harmony at times before veering off
again, each on his own path but constantly surging back to the other. The
music flows effortlessly from two brilliant masters. (Sammy Stein)
With Jon Irabagon:
Perelman's duet with Jon Irabagon never had a chance of being a run-of-the-mill affair, that
simply is not a choice with these two innovative and energetic musicians.
The opener, 'Six,' begins with a squall of notes followed by the sounds of
giddy, avuncular baby aliens. The chattering sounds accompany Perelman's
nascent melodic lines. Three minutes into the piece, the two have gone
through a set of tandem legato melodies, followed by a stretch where
Perelman presses against Irabagon's storm of extended sopranino saxophone techniques. Towards the end of the track, they
seem to have found a sort of tune with piercing counterpoint from the tiny sopranino saxophone. On the following track, 'Seven,' the
two carry on in a deeply syncopated, ping-ponging manner, reaching unusual
levels of cohesion - both melodically and in sonic terror. Track 5,
entitled "Three," is a jittery piece, made up of shards of contrasting
sounds, but comes together to end in an intense burst of intertwining musical purpose. Throughout their meeting, the moments of unfettered sound
making is equal to the melodic ideas that they share. (Paul Acquaro)
With Joe McPhee:
Let's just get this out of the way. Both Ivo Perelman and Joe McPhee are
absolute masters of improvisation and the instant compositions on this disc
only serve to solidify their positions. The most obvious mode of operation
here is that McPhee riffs in the lower registers of the tenor while
Perelman flies around up in the ether. But that's merely where most of the
pieces begin or “go home.” Our heroes also wind around each other in the
same register and pop into the stratosphere with similar punch and vigor,
making it challenging at times to tell who is going what. This
collaboration bears beautiful and often hypnotic results, as on “Five” or
considers the magic weaving that conjures up the mysterious feel of duduk
player, Djivan Gasparyan on “Two”. But at turns their conversations can
become weepy and dark, or they can ascend into an Ayler brothers' style of
rapid jabs and punctuation. My favorite of the bunch is “Three,” where Joe
howls and brays at the stars that Ivo is punching into the night sky before
both tenors begin the speedy process of connecting them with musical lines.
McPhee has an epiphany of some sort that prompts him to begin speaking in
tongues. When Ivo responds, it's nothing less than overtones of the
barnyard and several stalls require cleaning. (Tom Burris)
With Colin Stetson:
Montreal-based multi-instrumentalist Colin Stetson brings to his first
meeting with Perelman the contrabass saxophone. Perelman and Stetson's
duets attempt to find common, resonating ground between the higher register
of Perelman’s singing tenor sax, which can be associated with his recent
study of bel canto opera, and the vibrating, deep-toned growl of Stetson’s
contrabass saxophone, including his extended breathing techniques that add
percussive and otherworldly abstract touches. These patient, slow-cooking
duets stress, again, Perelman’s uncanny ability to create spontaneous and
stimulating synergy. These free improvised pieces sound like introspective
and contemplative, deep meditations on the contrasting, sometimes dissonant
and quite intriguing sonic palettes of the two horns playing together, but
rarely reach turbulent, cathartic climaxes. (Eyal Hareuveni)
With Vinny Golia:
Playful, challenging, but accessible, it's not hard to find your place
within the intertwining lines of these two woodwind masters. Golia, a
master of a seemingly endless array of woodwinds, here sticks to clarinet,
the basset horn - a slightly darker toned mid-sized clarinet - and the
smallest of the saxes, the soprillo, trades lines deftly with Perelman in
this alluring meet-up. The opening track, 'Seven,' begins with the lightly
aching sound of Perleman alone, delivering a
seamless stream of notes. A hint of a melody creeps
in at some moments, and then Golia comes in on the clarinet, his sound a
bit woodier than Perelman's. The two slowly build up their conversation,
reacting to each other's musical intentions telepathically. Track
two, entitled 'Two,' begins again with Perelman alone, but his arching
lines are soon traced by Golia, at times the two seem to stretch their
notes out over vast musical spaces, both complementing and competing with
each other. Track 'Six' begins with Golia solo, his clarinet a buzz of
arpeggiated runs. Perelman reacts with his own vibrating melodies that
sometimes seem to spiral away from his horn into curlicues of air. The
track ends with a sonorous tone from Golia as he then recaps his kinetic
introduction. The interactions are rich and rewarding throughout this
entire encounter. (Paul Acquaro)
With Dave Liebman:
The Perelman-Liebman tracks are immersive, and Liebman is given rein to
bring his expansive range of style and expression to this series of duets.
The silences are as important as the playing in some parts, and Perelman
here shows his innate ability to tune towards another musician in exemplary
lead or reaction, depending on the nuance of the piece. Each dialogue
explores a different part of the unifying language of the music, with some
tracks feeling like two or three as the atmosphere switches from sublime to
dramatic dynamism. Liebman, at times, takes a suggestion from Perelman and
works his emotive response, which intuitively, Perelman then re-takes and
places his voice on it. There are moments when Perelman briefly sets up a
blues/rock theme under Liebman’s whimsical top line, the line vanishing
when the lead switches back to Perelman. At other times, the pair swap
short, sharp riffs, reflecting and changing them, often ending as Perelman
screams down the scale. These swapped themes echo throughout the tracks,
creating a series of interlinked yet distinct conversations. Immersive and
completely spell-binding. (Sammy Stein)
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