Jazz Articles
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Ivo Perelman, Chad Fowler, Reggie Workman and Andrew Cyrille: Embracing the Unknown
by Troy Dostert
Since founding Mahakala Music in 2019, saxophonist Chad Fowler has done as much as anyone to continue the spirit of unfettered free jazz, drawing on an illustrious roster which includes veterans such as William Parker, Matthew Shipp, Joe McPhee, Ivo Perelman and many others, with Fowler himself frequently appearing alongside them. The label is also doing a superb job of bringing together cross-generational assemblages of musicians, as on 2022's Alien Skin, which brought Shipp, Parker and Perelman together with Fowler, ...
read moreIvo Perelman / Chad Fowler / Reggie Workman / Andrew Cyrille: Embracing the Unknown
by Mark Corroto
Let's explore the title of saxophonist Ivo Perelman's latest release, Embracing the Unknown. His quartet with fellow saxophonist Chad Fowler, plus jazz legends Reggie Workman and Andrew Cyrille embrace, or welcome, adopt, and maybe better stated, champion the unknown. This exercise in instant composing guides listeners through the mysterious, the new, the novel, the undiscovered, i.e. the unknown. But then again, doesn't every Ivo Perelman recording embrace the unknown? With his one hundred plus (and counting) discography, the ...
read moreJeff Arnal / Curt Cloninger: Drum Major Instinct
by Glenn Astarita
Drum Major Instinct is an experimental music duo from Asheville, North Carolina. The duo consists of Jeff Arna, who plays drums & percussion, and Curt Cloninger, who works with modular synthesisers. Their debut release offers an entrancing blend of soundscapes which defy easy categorization. The album title emanates from a 1968 speech by Dr. Martin Luther King, referencing the 1952 homily Drum Major Instincts by J. Wallace Hamilton which provides an underlying modus operandi for the album as a whole. ...
read moreMatthew Shipp: The Intrinsic Nature Of Shipp
by Karl Ackermann
In a broad-themed 2023 interview with All About Jazz, Matthew Shipp described The Intrinsic Nature Of Shipp as his grand statement for who I am now." With this solo release, we have a time-stamp in the composer's constantly evolving portfolio. As we trace Shipp's music from his first solo work, Symbol Systems (No More Records, 1995), through a quarter century, a sense of composing and playing in the moment becomes career-defining. Shipp's musical explorations are location pins on terrains which ...
read moreIvo Perelman: Reed Rapture in Brooklyn
by Jeff Schwartz
Is this album fundamentally unreviewable? Are there jazz fans who do not immediately know if they need an 11-hour collection of 103 improvised duets between Ivo Perelman and a dozen saxophonists and clarinetists? It is at least describable. Perelman is faithful to his tenor, while his partners bring examples of nearly every type of saxophone, from soprillo to contrabass, as well as most of the clarinet family. Although all tracks are free improvisations, the default mode is ...
read moreIvo Perelman / Arun Ortiz / Lester St. Louis: Prophecy
by Mike Jurkovic
Movies run through our heads all the time and Prophecy, the latest excursion into the unruly unknown by tenor saxophonist and tireless creator Ivo Perelman and his two latest partners-in-crime, pianist Aruan Ortiz and cellist Lester St. Louis is just the soundtrack for them. Boisterous, disconcerting, consoling. Musically obtuse yet oddly accessible for the love scenes and elegies. Music restless for the reveal. Hypnotic themes for the terse encounters between lead characters or the silent parsing of the ...
read moreIvo Perelman - Dave Burell - Bobby Kapp: Trichotomy
by Hrayr Attarian
Intrepid saxophonist Ivo Perelman is a master improviser who has the knack of engaging others of a similar mindset to create provocative music. On his third release of 2023, the stimulating Trichotomy, he joins forces with the equally innovative pianist Dave Burrell with whom he recorded a duo session a few years back. Versatile drummer Bobby Kapp, another idiosyncratic artist, completes the trio which stretches out on two long, dynamic, multilayered pieces. Part One" starts off with a ...
read moreIvo Perelman: Artificial Intelligence
by Jeff Schwartz
Do not be misled by the title: no bots or algorithms were involved in creating this album. While there have been fascinating experiments in improvisation with interactive software by George Lewis, Richard Teitelbaum and others, Artificial Intelligence is just under an hour of spontaneous human interaction by two of the most prolific and uncategorizable improvisers in New York. This is a studio recording of free improvisation, from January 2022. There are no compositions, and if there are ...
read moreIvo Perelman and Elliott Sharp: Artificial Intelligence
by Hrayr Attarian
Saxophonist Ivo Perelman has mastered the art of duets. In addition to multiple collaborations with pianist Matthew Shipp, in the third decade of the 21st century he released two box-sets of one-on-one recordings, the first with pianists and the second with other woodwind players. On Artificial Intelligence he is paired with composer and guitarist Elliott Sharp for an entirely improvised four-part set of provocative music. The versatile Sharp, an experimenter par excellence, is immediately in sync with Perelman ...
read moreGeorge Cartwright: Stick Insect
by George Cartwright
Recently, Davey Williams spoke up to me and he said: George that's dang good band ys got there in the frozen zen like neither atmospheres three up way up there and:" It was pretty good there down in Lower Alabama. The frog of time has hopped about on my memory of the show or even when the two of us got together. Two bedroom apt, Dave was working a country band playing drums and playing the ...
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