Ivo Perelman, saxophone
Dominic Duval, double-bass
Free
The Rotunda
4014 Walnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
Ivo Perlman is best known for performing in a heavily distorted, abstract-expressionist vein first tapped in the '60s by the late Albert Ayler. His first album, Ivo (K2B2, 1989), featured an all-star cast that included drummer Peter Erskine, bassist John Patitucci, percussionist Airto, and vocalist Flora Purim, among others. As his career progressed, Perelman recorded often with players of the avant-garde; he's made albums with the bassist Dominic Duval, pianist Borah Bergman, drummers Rashied Ali and Jay Rosen, pianists Marilyn Crispell and Matthew Shipp, and guitarist Joe Morris, to name a very few.
Perelman played classical guitar, cello, clarinet, trombone, and piano while growing up in Sao Paulo. At the age of 19 he adopted the tenor saxophone as his primary instrument. After coming to the U.S., he attended the Berklee School of Music in Boston for a semester before dropping out (Perelman is purportedly a mostly self-taught, instinctive player; it's not hard to imagine the problems he might have had in a regimented music education system). Perelman's travels took him to Los Angeles in 1986, where he studied privately and performed. Not long after the release of his first album in 1989, Perelman relocated to New York and began recording a series of albums on such labels as ITM, Enja, Ibeji, Homestead, CIMP, Cadence, and Leo. Perelman is noted for combining simple Brazilian folk themes with the techniques of free jazz; in 1997 he did the same thing with Jewish music, making En Adir: Traditional Jewish Songs for the Music & Arts label. Later, Perelman has recorded a series of duets with the aforementioned Bergman, Rosen, Morris (with Perelman on cello), and Crispell. It should be said to Perelman's credit that, while he may not be a terribly innovative or even distinctive player, he is a passionate artist who conveys a great depth of feeling through his music.
New Yorker Dominic Duval is one of the finest and most prolific bassists on the contemporary scene, having played and recorded with some of the greatest names in jazz and new music. Duval's recent tenure with pianist Cecil Taylor's trio has cemented his reputation as one of free jazz's important figures. Dominic has performed and recorded with such notables as saxophonists Joe McPhee, Ivo Perelman, Glen Spearman, Chris Kelsey, and Mark Whitecage, composer Pauline Oliveros, trombonist Steve Swell, among many others. Duval's solo bass CD, Night Bird Inventions, was a Top 10 pick in the Coda Magazine critics poll, and his string ensemble CD, State of the Art, was chosen one of the year's best in the Jazziz Magazine poll. For some of his work, Duval draws upon concepts outside music. Under The Pyramid is a paean to the people of Mexico, and Duval has also expressed through his music his solidarity with Native Americans. Demanding of audiences, intellectually unsettling and emotionally profound, Duval's often unpredictable music is always close to, and at times is beyond, the cutting edge of jazz.
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