Ivo Perelman Duets With Tom Rainey

DUOLOGUES 1: TURNING POINT / 7 Improvisations / Ivo Perelman, t-sax; Tom Rainey, dm / Ibeji Music, no number

Considering the extraordinary number of recordings that Ivo Perelman has made over the years, which seems to me to be one album every two months every year of his life, I have come to the conclusion that more than half of his performing time takes place in recording studios. Even more curious is the wide number of labels that have issued these discs. I am informed that Ibecji Music is his own label, so somehow or other he has managed to produce his own recordings in addition to those appearing on a bewildering number of other labels.

Ivo knows my tastes well enough to know that I have trouble grasping his most extreme and screaming improvisations. It’s not so much that I’m a fan of “soft jazz” – I’m really not – so much as that I become edgy and uncomfortable when he, or any other sax player for that matter, begins screaming at full volume in the upper register. It’s not that I don’t appreciate his extending the harmonies so much as that it is always at a fortissimo level. If he were to play the exact same notes at a somewhat softer volume, I would appreciate them more. He has such a warm tone for the most part, which I really like, that I’d like to hear it in his top range as well.

On this new album he is playing duets with drummer Tom Rainey who, to my ears, is a less free-form drummer than the kind Perelman usually works with. He tends to prefer set rhythms, and this in turn helps to curb Perelman, who is always very sensitive to the way his musical partners play with him. (Pianist Matthew Shipp is, as we all know, an ideal partner for him because Shipp always tends towards some sort of musical form, which reins in some of Perelman’s more extreme tendencies.)

I woke up this morning with a fatigue headache, thus I decided to turn the volume down a bit when reviewing this recording. And you know what? I found that it helped me appreciate Ivo more because of that—but not only due to the lowered volume on my speakers. I also discovered, much to my amazement, a new Ivo Perelman on this CD, one who really does just occasionally go into the extreme upper range and, more interestingly, plays moving figures in the stratosphere rather than just repeated notes. This was quite fascinating to me, and indeed I was able to appreciate what he was doing (though I still wish he could play them a bit softer) than in the past. To sum this approach up, he “stabs” at notes less and plays actual, fluid figures more often without sacrificing his sometimes quite incredible creativity.

In addition, by following Rainey’s swinging beat, the music he spontaneously creates here also swings, which isn’t something I’m used to in his records. In the second improvisation, in fact, he even creates real melodic lines that have shape and form. You could have knocked me over with a feather, as they used to say. Some of his playing on this track could even possibly have fit in with Charlie Parker, some of it not, but it’s still a new, different, and to my mind more consistently creative approach.

In my last review or two of Perelman’s CDs I made the observation that he doesn’t so much play music in the sense of constructed lines so much as he is an abstract painter using a horn instead of a paintbrush. That is also true here as well, but the lines he paints here are more fluid than jagged, and if anything his tone is even more lovely here than I recall hearing it on several of his older releases. Nowhere is this more evident than on Track 3, which opens with an extended a cappella improvisation by Perelman without Rainey, and even here his playing is more curvulinear than jagged. Rainey picks up on this beautifully, coming in behind him mostly playing soft tom-toms with occasional touches on the bass drum and cymbals. It’s actually a delicate piece, and, responding to Rainey’s delicacy, Perelman himself becomes even more delicate in his own playing—and, dare I say it, more creative. There is so much to hear in this track that I played it twice through. There is no question that he creates some extraordinarily beautiful and interesting lines on this track, so many, in fact, that I can’t even imagine another tenor saxist—not even a truly gifted one like Noah Preminger, Charles Lloyd or Jason Robinson, each of whom I’ve reviewed lately—being able to play so much that is different and unusual as well as highly creative in just one track. Towards the end, the old squealing Ivo emerges but not for long, and he ends this piece with an absolutely extraordinary extempore cadenza that, if written out, would make an exceptional étude for saxophone.

By controlling not only his horn (which he always has under control) but also creating real musical structures, Ivo has entered an entirely new phase of his playing, one that I sincerely hope he will continue to extend and build on in future releases. His last album with Shipp, Fruition (on ESP-Disk’), came close to this, but I will stake my reputation as a music critic by saying that Duologues I is even better. In Track 4, for instance, he reverts to his older self, but once again he is responding to his musical partner, and in this case Rainey is simply playing a string of single beats, mostly on the snare and bass drums with occasional cymbal crashes, thus providing Perelman with a unique challenge: how to make music out of what is essentially an ostinato beat. But Perelman is not fazed in the least; he always has his old style to fall back on in such a situation while still being able to make something new out of it. His response to Rainey’s chop-beat is to play one-beat figures in double and then quadruple time. He sounds like a hyperactive cobra who is not just wriggling but spinning like a top to escape his basket. Rainey gradually eases up on the tempo, and as he does so Perelman gives us another taste of his new, more relaxed, delicate and melodic style. The duo continues in this vein, Rainey now playing almost consistently softly on the cymbals, for some time; then Rainey begins to “dance” with his drumsticks on the edge of his snare, and Perelman lightens his tone even further and does his own quirky dance in counterpoint to him.

Track 5 begins slowly, almost mysteriously, with Rainey playing an irregular beat on the bass drum, tom-tom and cymbals. Perelman snakes his way around this beat, also maintaining a feeling of mystery, and again, he surprises us with some quite melodic figures. He even finds a rhythm of his own to play in which is not Rainey’s, but complements what Rainey is playing: one of the rare moments, in my experience, that this Brazilian-born saxist has played something like a Latin beat. After a while, however, he subdivides this beat; Rainey reacts by pulling back on a regular rhythm, just providing some cymbal washes with very light bass drum taps, then playing with the sticks on his snare. All of sudden, both musicians are in an almost belly-dancing rhythm, which then morphs back into another sort of Latin beat. It’s really quite amazing how creative this music is, and all of it invented on the spot. It’s one of those magical moments that you’re glad someone was able to capture on tape.

Rainey swings at a bright tempo from the outset of Track 6, yet surprisingly, our new, “relaxed” version of Ivo Perelman does not immediately start screaming; on the contrary, perhaps lulled into a mellow mood by the previous track, he continues playing in that style, in fact if anything even more delicately—even playfully creating quadruple-time figures that again snake around in curved rather than angular lines. Even when he provides a bit of tenor sax pointillism (and, yes, some upper-register squeals), Perelman maintains this lighter touch. Oh, how long I’ve waited for this! There are further surprises in store on this track, but although I won’t spoil them by revealing them all to you in print, I will say that you’ll be alternately thrilled and delighted by the way it plays out (yes, even with some high-register squeals in it).

The last track is the most free-form of all, with Rainey providing a loose, asymmetrical beat and Perelman singing on his tenor. And yes, on this track he does play his high-register extensions softly. Bravo, Ivo! They sound much more interesting (to me, at last) when you pull back on the volume…but later on, he does squeal at full throttle. Oh well. At least he ends the piece at a slower, more lyrical tempo while sustaining an incredible altissimo high A.

I was generally very pleased with this CD, and would have no hesitation in playing it for others as an example of Ivo Perelman at his best. And Tom Rainey, too.

—© 2024 Lynn René Bayley

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