(Reprinted from the March 2021 issue of Downbeat magazine)
Tenor saxophonist Ivo Perelman appreciates his daily routines these days: a jaunt to the beach, some sea diving in the Atlantic Ocean, and three or four hours of studying bel canto opera. In mid-2020, soon after the coronavirus pandemic reached Brooklyn, his base of operation for decades, he had decided to relocate to the city of Fortaleza, in the northeast corner of his native Brazil. Since then, these newly established disciplines have provided him with “the perfect combination for life,” he said in a December Zoom call with Downbeat.
Arguably, São Paulo-born Perelman stands as one of the most prolific free improvisers around: Over the course of the last three decades, he’s recorded just over 100 albums, the bulk of them for British label Leo Records. His eponymous 1989 debut, Ivo (K2B2 Records)—with its coterie of notable guests like drummer Peter Erskine, percussionist Airto Moreira, pianist Eliane Elias, and singer Flora Purim—established his bona fides as an avant-garde talent; he would go on to work with eminent creative musicians such as drummer/percussionist Andrew Cyrille, bassist Reggie Workman, and pianists Paul Bley and Joanne Brackeen.
Perelman recently added three new albums to his massive oeuvre, each project wholly improvised and unique in character. In crafting these new releases, the only concept that Perelman brought into the studio with him, he reports, was “to open my ears and heart to my fellow musicians, because that’s how the dialogue takes place.”
Last November, Perelman released Shamanism, a trio album with two of his long-standing collaborators, pianist Matthew Shipp and guitarist Joe Morris. Shifting between lyricism and bold expressivity, the album’s 10 tracks show off Perelman’s ease in the challenging altissimo register on the saxophone. While Shipp and Morris probe fleeting harmonic ideas on tunes like “Spiritual Energies” and “Religious Ecstasy,” Perelman will catapult from the lower sonority of his instrument into the breathy, high-pitched wails and rasps that characterize his instrumental style.
Shipp and Morris join Perelman in this esoteric musicality as equals; each player contributes in fair measure to the heft of the impromptu compositions. Perelman acknowledges that the trio’s easy rapport makes for an advanced collective expression: “It’s a three-way synergy of sorcerers,” Perelman commented.
For his January release, The Garden of Jewels, Perelman chose a different tack for the trio format. With Shipp again on piano, Perelman invited drummer Whit Dickay to contribute a percussive layer to the intuitive communication that he shared with Shipp. But “I didn’t want this album to become a ‘Perelman-Shipp duo plus drums’,” he noted.
By taking a direct leadership role, Perelman shaped the musical narrative of each of the album’s eight compositions—imperceptibly, from behind the horn. The excitement arises out of the trio’s adherence to the inner logic of Perelman’s ideas—the synced rhythmic patterns on “Tourmaline,” for instance, or the textural shading beneath the continuous horn line on “Turquoise.”
The radiant sound of the ensemble led Perelman, who is also a painter and jewelry maker, to the project’s apt title: “[All of the tunes] are like a precious stones, exquisitely polished—like a garden of jewels,” he offered.
Perelman had never played in duo with a trumpeter until Polarity, his February 2021 release with Nate Wooley. On this album—the most idiosyncratic of the three—Perelman and Wooley use just breath and imagination to craft articulate expressions of spontaneous communication. On these 10 tracks especially one hears how Perelman’s study of bel canto techniques has paid off: His control of each declarative phrase is superb, as he integrates aesthetic elements culled from the classical repertoire.
Beyond such experimentation, Perelman engages in an intense repartee with Wooley, one filled with squawking and singing, spluttering notes and regal tones, microtonal dissonances and unexpected harmonic resolutions. The density of musical information on offer here makes for a complex listen; Perelman admires Wooley as co-creator in this effort. “He goes against anything I knew about trumpet playing,” he said.
As the pandemic stretches on, Perelman has started to think about returning to Brooklyn. He’s eager to get back into the studio and apply recent breakthroughs in his daily practice to improvising. In fact, he’s hoping to re-record some or all of his existing discography with the same personnel, simply to see how his playing has changed. It’s a crazy idea, he admits, but likely to happen. “Somehow I always end up doing things that sound impossible,” he observed.