Brazilian tenor saxophonist Ivo Perelman is a remarkably productive recording artist known for combining Brazilian folk themes with free jazz and an improvisational aesthetic that has grown increasingly varied as he has become a more prolific recording artist. While he continues to play well in the heavily distorted, abstract-expressionist vein developed by Albert Ayler, his sound also fits nicely alongside similarly inclined contemporaries including Elliott Levin and Ken Simon. Early trio recordings such as 1996's thematically related Slaves of Job and Revelation showcased compositions that opened doors into exploratory flights of fancy. These flights provided foundations for the music that would ensue over the following decades, particularly his many fruitful, wildly varied recordings for Leo Records -- including 2011's The Hour of the Star -- and his many Art of the Improv Trio recordings. On 2013's The Edge and Art of the Duet: Vol. 1, he began an ongoing recording partnership with Matthew Shipp. Their collaboration has netted dozens of albums, including 2015's Callas, and 2018's seven-volume The Art of Perelman-Shipp series. 2019 saw a move to ESP-Disk and the quartet offering Ineffable Joy, which included Shipp, bassist William Parker, and drummer Bobby Kapp. 2021 saw the release of five Perelman titles including Garden of Jewels with Shipp and drummer Whit Dickey, and Purity of Desire with Gordon Grdina and Hamin Honari. In 2022, a nine-disc box of sax-piano duets featuring some of Perelman's favorite pianists was released as Brass and Ivory Tales.

Born in Sao Paulo in 1961, Perelman played classical guitar, cello, clarinet, trombone, and piano while growing up. At the age of 19 he adopted the tenor saxophone as his primary instrument. After arriving in the U.S., he attended the Berklee School of Music in Boston for a semester before dropping out (he is purportedly a mostly self-taught player).

Perelman's travels took him to Los Angeles in 1986, where he studied privately and performed. His first album, 1989's Ivo, featured an all-star cast that included drummer Peter Erskine, bassist John Patitucci, percussionist Airto, and vocalist Flora Purim, among others. Also around this time, Perelman relocated to New York.

During the '90s, he founded his own Ibeji label, releasing albums like Soccer Land and Tapeba Songs. Ever explorative, in 1997 Perelman combined Jewish music and avant-garde jazz, making En Adir: Traditional Jewish Songs for the Music & Arts label. Quite prolific, Perelman recorded often with players of the avant-garde; he's made albums with bassist Dominic Duval, pianist Borah Bergman, drummers Rashied Ali and Jay Rosen, and pianists Marilyn Crispell and Matthew Shipp, to name just a few.

In the 2000s, Perelman continued his busy recording schedule, playing most often with pianist Shipp, as well as adventurous collaborators like violinist Mat Maneri, guitarist Joe Morris, drummer Gerald Cleaver, and others. Many of these efforts were issued on Leo Records, including such albums as 2011's The Hour of the Star, 2012's Clairvoyant, 2014's Book of Sound, and 2016's Blue. Also in 2016, Perelman released six volumes of a series on Leo called The Art of the Improv Trio. A similar series detailing his partnership with Shipp, the seven-volume The Art of Perelman-Shipp, appeared in 2017. In 2018, Perelman released no less than five recordings for Leo including Strings 1, the duo offerings Kindred Spirits -- with bass clarinetist Rudi Mahall -- the triple-album Oneness with Shipp, and Spiritual Prayers with saxophonist Jason Stein. In 2019, in addition to continuing his collaborations with Shipp, the saxophonist, along with violist Matt Maneri, delivered three more volumes in the Strings series with alternating sidemen who included Nate Wooley, Ned Rothenberg, Jason Hwang, and Mark Feldman. 2019 also saw Perelman team up with drummer Bobby Kapp, bassist William Parker, and tenor saxophone player Matthew Shipp for the ESP-Disk-issued Ineffable Joy.

In 2020, Perelman issued Deep Resonance with the Arcado String Trio, followed by the digital, six-album Strings & Voices Project placing the saxophonist in the company of various guitarists, bassists, violinists, and singers. Also released was Dust of Light\Ears Drawing Sounds in duet with guitarist Pascal Marzan.

In January 2021, Perelman issued The Purity of Desire in a trio with oudist/guitarist Gordon Grdina and percussionist Hamin Honari. A month later, Polarity, a duo with Nate Wooley, appeared from Burning Ambulance. In January 2022, Poland's Fundacja Słuchaj! released Brass and Ivory Tales, a nine-disc box set of duos with pianists recorded between 2014 and 2021. His recording partners for the project included Marlyn Crispell, Craig Taborn, Aaron Parks, Vijay Iyer, Angelica Sanchez, Dave Burrell, Sylvie Courvoisier, Augustin Fernandez, and Aruan Ortiz. ~ Chris Kelsey & Thom Jurek

With a unique, instantly recognizable style, pianist Matthew Shipp has been active on the international jazz scene since late 1980s. His boundary-less musical approach crisscrosses free jazz, elliptical post-bop, and modern classical music. He served as pianist in the David S. Ware Quartet during the early '90s before leading his own dates and recording duos with a variety of musicians. He released his solo debut, Symbol Systems, in 1995 as well as the quartet offering Critical Mass. He issued many recordings for Hat -- including 2001's Expansion, Power, Release -- and Thirsty Ear, including 2007's Piano Vortex and 2013's Piano Sutras. Shipp also records for France's Rogue Art label, which issued 2013's Rex, Wrecks & XXX with Evan Parker, and 2015's Our Lady of the Flowers. In 2016 Shipp began playing and recording in several bands for ESP-Disk with reedist Mat Walerian under the names Uppercut and Jungle; each released a Live at Okuden volume that year. In 2018, Shipp released the solo Zero. 2020 saw the release of Welcome Adventure, Vol. 1, by a collective that included saxophonist Daniel Carter. In 2021, he issued the trio offering Village Mothership and the solo Codebreaker for Tao Forms. 2022 saw the release of Old Stories, a double-length duo set with saxophonist Chad Fowler, Welcome Adventure, Vol. 2, and the trio date World Construct for ESP-Disk.

Born in 1960 and raised in Wilmington, Delaware, Shipp grew up around '50s jazz recordings. He began playing piano at the young age of five and decided to focus on jazz by the time he was 12. He played a Fender Rhodes in rock bands while privately devouring recordings by a variety of jazz players. His first mentor was a man in his hometown named Sunyata, who was enthusiastic about a variety of subjects in addition to music. Shipp later studied music theory and improvisation under Clifford Brown's teacher Robert "Boisey" Lawrey, as well as classical piano and bass clarinet for the school band. After one year at the University of Delaware, Shipp left and took lessons with Dennis Sandole for a short time, after which he attended the New England Conservatory of Music for two years.

Shipp moved to N.Y.C. in 1984 and soon met bassist William Parker, among others. Both were playing with tenor saxophonist Ware by 1989. Meanwhile, Shipp had debuted as a recording artist in a duo with alto player Rob Brown on Sonic Explorations, recorded in November 1987 and February 1988. Shipp married singer Delia Scaife around 1990. He went on to lead his own trio with Parker and drummers Whit Dickey and Susie Ibarra. Shipp has led dates for a number of labels, including FMP, No More, Eremite, Thirsty Ear, and Silkheart. In 2000, he began acting as curator for Thirsty Ear's Blue Series, which hosted a number of Shipp's own recordings, as well as the recordings of William Parker, Tim Berne, Roy Campbell, Craig Taborn, Spring Heel Jack, and Mat Maneri. The following year saw the release of Nu Bop, an exploration into traditional jazz, followed closely by its 2003 counterpart, Equilibrium. In 2004, Shipp released Harmony and Abyss, a meditation on repetitive melodic and harmonic structures. One arrived in January 2006 and Piano Vortex followed a year later.

4D, featuring Shipp on solo piano, was released by Thirsty Ear early in 2010. It was one of several recordings from the pianist in the initial years of the 21st century, which included a two-disc solo piano recital entitled Creation Out of Nothing: Live in Moscow on the SoLyd Records imprint and the stellar trio set Night Logic, with Joe Morris and former Sun Ra saxophonist Marshall Allen, on the Rogue Art label. Shipp kept up the pace in 2011, kicking off the year with the double-CD offering Art of the Improviser, which showcased him in two different live settings: one solo and one in a trio with bassist Michael Bisio and drummer Whit Dickey. In the spring he released a duet recording with alto saxophonist Darius Jones titled Cosmic Lieder on the AUM Fidelity label. In 2012, he re-formed the trio with Bisio and Dickey for Elastic Aspects. Shipp entered into a prolific collaboration with saxophonist Ivo Perelman for a slew of projects that year, and 2013 included a duet, trios, and quartets with various personnel, all issued by Leo Records. Titles included The Gift, The Clairvoyant, The Foreign Legion, A Violent Dose of Anything, Enigma, The Art of the Duet, Vol. 1, The Edge, and Serendipity. In the fall of 2013, Shipp released the solo piano offering Piano Sutras for Thirsty Ear, as well as a retrospective for the label entitled Greatest Hits and a duet offering with saxophonist John Butcher, Fataka 2.

Shipp maintained a prolific release and touring pace in 2014. First to appear was the trio date The Roots of Things in February with Dickey and Bisio, followed by two more sets in various ensembles with Perelman. The first, titled The Other Edge, was issued in March and featured the pianist's quartet backing the saxophonist, while the second, released the same month, was Book of Sound, a collaborative recording between Perelman, Shipp, and Parker. Symbol Systems, a solo piano outing, appeared in May from Lithuania's No Business label, while The Darkseid Recital, a second chapter in Jones' and Shipp's "Cosmic Lieder," was released in August by AUM Fidelity, followed by the solo piano offering I've Been to Many Places on Thirsty Ear in September. That year, the French Rogue Art label issued no less than four Shipp-led dates compiled from several years of performances. They included the solo Piano (2008); a duet album with Evan Parker titled Rex, Wrecks & XXX (2013); Right Hemisphere with Brown, Dickey and Morris (2008); and Declared Enemy: Salute to the 100001 Stars: A Tribute to Jean Genet with Parker, Gerald Cleaver, Sabir Mateen, and Denis Lavant (2006).

The following year saw two more releases from the label. Our Lady of the Flowers was a Genet tribute follow-up a decade on (sans Lavant), and the controversial but still widely celebrated trio recording To Duke. Shipp also issued a pair of duet recordings: Live at Okuden: The Uppercut with Polish reed and woodwind master Mat Walerian on ESP-Disk, and Callas with Perelman for Leo.

Associations with both men produced more 13 more recordings in 2016 and 2017. Complementary Colors and Corpo were duo dates with Perelman (the pair released 13 albums together before 2017 was out), while Butterfly Whispers added Dickey to make it a trio. Live at Okuden: Jungle with Walerian and Hamid Drake, capturing a performance from 2012, was released by ESP-Disk. The pianist issued a trio date titled Piano Song in early 2017, with Michael Bisio on bass and drummer Newman Taylor Baker. Produced by Peter Gordon, it marked Shipp's swan song as a recording artist for Thirsty Ear, though he remained curator of its Blue Series imprint. An ESP-Disk trio date with Walerian and Parker was issued as Toxic: This Is Beautiful Because We Are Beautiful People during the late spring.

In early 2018, Shipp released three albums. In January, Accelerated Projection, a duo date with Roscoe Mitchell was issued by France's Rogue Art label. A month later, Shipp released two dates through ESP-Disk simultaneously: Sonic Fiction, a quartet date with Walerian, Bisio, and Dickey, and the solo piano offering Zero in February. In late 2018, Rogue Art issued a duo reunion by Shipp and Maneri titled Conference of the Mat/ts. In 2019, the label released three more Shipp titles: All Things Are, with Bisio and Newman Taylor Baker, Symbolic Reality, with Maneri and William Parker, and What If?, a duo offering with trumpeter Nate Wooley.

Though Shipp was unable to tour during the COVID-19 pandemic, he saw the release of eight recent archival projects. These included the duo outing Amalgam with Perelman; Welcome Adventure, Vol. 1 with Daniel Carter, Cleaver, and Parker, and two solo piano outings, The Piano Equation, and the epic The Reward (Solo Piano Suite in Four Movements). Okuden Quartet (Walerian, Hamid Drake, Parker and Shipp) released Every Dog Has Its Day But It Doesn't Matter Because Fat Cat Is Getting Fatter.

2021 was just as busy. He returned to touring, and he and Parker played on Francisco Mela's Music Frees Our Souls, Vol. 1. He issued two duo outings for Rogue Art -- Leonine Aspects with Evan Parker and Re-Union with William Parker. For the same label, he, Gerald Cleaver, and Joe Morris appeared in Paul Dunmall's quartet for The Bright Awakening. That July, he and Dickey issued the duos project Reels. In October, the Aum Fidelity-affiliated Tao Forms issued Village Mothership, a trio including Dickey, Shipp, and Parker, and in November, a solo Shipp put out Codebreaker. The following year, he collaborated with saxophonist Chad Fowler on the double-length, improvised duos set Old Stories for Mahakala Music. He also reprised his 577 Records collaboration with Carter, Parker, and Cleaver on Welcome Adventure, Vol. 2. In June he released the double-length set World Construct, his fifth offering for ESP-Disk, accompanied by bassist Michael Bisio and drummer/percussionist Newman Taylor Baker. ~ Thom Jurek & Joslyn Lane

Based in Brooklyn, New York, William Parker is the pre-eminent bassist in modern free jazz. He has released more than 150 titles under his own name, and played on hundreds more as a sideman and collaborator. Parker, who is also a poet, painter, and essayist, co-founded the Improvisers Collective with renowned dancer, choreographer, poet, and life partner Patricia Nicholson. He plays in nearly all of its ad hoc groups and leads their big band, the Little Huey Creative Music Ensemble. An important early document was the 1995 Black Saint offering In Order to Survive. As a bassist, Parker is possessed of a formidable technique. It can be heard as a lead instrument in trios (Painter's Spring), duos (Piercing the Veil), and on dozens of recordings with saxophonist David S. Ware and pianist Matthew Shipp. While leading numerous ensembles, Parker has explored and paid tribute to major artists from the Great Black Music tradition including the albums I Plan to Stay a Believer: The Inside Music of Curtis Mayfield and Essence of Ellington. He has also explored soul-jazz, dance, and spoken word, vocal music, and large-scale works. In 2021 he issued a sprawling ten-disc box of unreleased material titled Migration of Silence Into and Out of the Tone World. In 2022, with Andrew Cyrille and Enrico Rava, he issued the tribute offering 2 Blues for Cecil. October's Universal Tonality documented a 2002 performance by a Parker-led band of 17.

Parker grew up in New York City. Very early in his career he formed an association with Cecil Taylor; he played Carnegie Hall with the pianist in the early '70s. Parker released his first album as a leader in 1979. Through the Acceptance of the Mystery Peace (on Parker's own Centering Records) featured saxophonists Charles Brackeen and Jemeel Moondoc, and violinist Billy Bang. Parker became Taylor's regular bassist in the '80s. He played on several of the pianist's European records, and on Taylor's 1989 domestic major-label release In Florescence on A&M. Parker left Taylor in the early '90s and began working more often as a leader. He released a big-band record for his own label, then began releasing a series of CDs for other companies, significantly Black Saint. Beside his activities as a leader and community organizer, Parker would continue to work as a sideman through the mid-'90s; he remained the bassist of choice for downtown free players like David S. Ware, Matthew Shipp, and Rob Brown. The year 2000 was particularly busy for Parker as he recorded three of his own dates, including Painter's Spring and O'Neal's Porch, and appeared on numerous recordings as a sideman. The following year, in the wake of the World Trade Center terrorist attacks, Parker's Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra performed Distillation of Souls, dedicated to its victims, and released the live Raincoat in the River, Vol. 1: ICA Concert. He and drummer Hamid Drake issued the duet offering Piercing the Veil through AUM Fidelity, and his Song Cycle (with vocalists Lisa Sokolov, Ellen Christi, and pianist Yuko Fujiyama) was released by Boxholder. In 2002, Parker appeared on no less than 15 albums, among them Shipp's Nu Bop, Ware's Freedom Suite, and Rob Brown's Round the Bend, as well as four of his own trio and quintet dates. The latter, Raining on the Moon, featured vocalist Leena Conquest; he also released Corn Meal Dance.

In 2003, he toured England with Spring Heel Jack, Evan Parker, Han Bennink, Shipp, and J. Spaceman. The album Live appeared from Thirsty Ear. Parker toured for much of the year, and released several concert recordings, some cut some years earlier. They included Spontaneous with Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra at CBGB from the year before, and Never Too Late But Always Too Early with Drake and Peter Brötzmann, captured in 2001. The William Parker Violin Trio issued Scrapbook, and he appeared on Shipp's Equilibrium and numerous other recordings.

Parker's prolific pace continued unabated. The breadth and depth of his various projects as a leader, collaborator, and sideman proved inexhaustible. In 2005, Thirsty Ear released a duet with Shipp entitled Luc's Lantern (named for the French film director Jean Luc Godard), while Eremite issued Fred Anderson's Blue Winter with Parker and Drake in the rhythm section. The following year saw Parker play on Kidd Jordan's Palm of Soul. He also released a duet recording with Drake entitled Beans, Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra's For Percy Heath, and Requiem by the William Parker Bass Quartet featuring Charles Gayle.

In 2007, Rai Trade released The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayfield while Parker (who'd begun the project in 2001 and evolved it over subsequent years) was performing the music of Fats Waller and Duke Ellington in a dance piece called "On Their Shoulders We're Still Dancing," choreographed by Patricia Nicholson. His own quartet saw the Petit Oiseux album released while Tamarindo, a trio group with Tony Malaby and Nasheet Waits, appeared on a self-titled offering from Clean Feed, and Rogue Art released Alphaville Suite: Music Inspired by the Jean Luc Godard Film by the William Parker Double Quartet. The bassist was named one of the "50 Greatest New York Musicians of All Time" by Time Out New York, received a New York State Music Fund commission for the 2008 long-form work Double Sunrise Over Neptune, and performed at Vision Festival XII in August. The same year, Beyond Quantum with Anthony Braxton and Milford Graves was released by Tzadik, and the archival CT: The Dance Project with Cecil Taylor and Masashi Harada was issued by FMP. Among the Parker-related recordings to appear in 2009 were Farmers by Nature with Gerald Cleaver and Craig Taborn, Washed Away, Live at the Sunside with Drake and Sophia Domancich, Moondoc's complete Muntu Recordings box set, and the David S. Ware Quartet Live in Vilnius.

As the second decade of the new century began, Parker released I Plan to Stay a Believer: The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayfield, an expanded double-disc compilation of recordings from 2001-2010, via AUM Fidelity. The album made many jazz critics' year-end best-of lists. Centering Records released his Organ Quartet's Uncle Joe's Spirit House, and Parker appeared on over a dozen albums. The year 2011 held many highlights, not least among them Centering's three-disc solo bass box Crumbling in the Shadows Is Fraulein Miller's Stale Cake and Conversations from Rogue Art, which featured the bassist's solos and interviews with other musicians. Farmers by Nature also issued their sophomore effort, Out of This World's Distortions. No Business released the archival box set Centering: Unreleased Early Recordings 1976-1987 in 2012, while Altitude, a new recording, appeared from the bassist, Cleaver, and Joe Morris. The double-disc Essence of Ellington (billed to the William Parker Orchestra) was issued by Centering. The critical acclaim for the latter was universal.

In 2013, Parker was the recipient of a Doris Duke Artist Award. His quartet recorded Live in Wroclove, and he led the trio session Tender Exploration. AUM Fidelity released the eight-disc box set Wood Flute Songs: Anthology Live 2006-2012, which showcased his various ensembles. Parker appeared on many archival recordings in 2014 as well as in new trio settings led by James Brandon Lewis (Divine Travels) and Ivo Perelman (Book of Sound). The Farmers by Nature band also issued its third album, Love and Ghosts.

Parker revived Raining on the Moon for 2015's The Great Spirit. AUM Fidelity released the three-disc archival box For Those Who Are, Still. Conversations II: Dialogues & Monologues was issued by Rogue Art, and collected duet performances with Jordan interspersed with more artist interview snippets. Live at NHKM, in collaboration with Konstruct, was another of the more than 15 recordings the bassist's name was attached to that year. In spring 2016, Centering brought out Stan's Hat Flapping in the Wind, a series of songs with pianist Cooper-Moore and Sokolov on vocals. In July, Song Sentimentale appeared from Otoroku. It was compiled from three nights of concerts at Cafe Oto by Brötzmann, Parker, and Drake, and released as two separate volumes in different formats. Each contained a unique track listing. The following year Parker was an integral part of two important recording on as many labels: Art of the Improv Trio, Vol. 4 with saxophonist Ivo Perelman and drummer Cleaver on Leo, and Toxic: This Is Beautiful Because We Are Beautiful People with Polish saxophonist Mat Walerian and pianist Matthew Shipp on ESP-Disk. Parker also issued the co-led Bass Duo with Italian classical bassist Stefano Scodanibbio for Aum Fidelity. In 2018, via his Centering label, Parker released the three-disc box set Voices Fall from the Sky, a premier of two long-form works for singers (the title track and "Essence"), as well as a disc of previously issued songs. He followed it with a double disc companion containing the albums Flower in a Stained-Glass Window and The Blinking of the Ear.

A year later, Parker and his oldest flagship group, In Order to Survive, issued the double-length Live/ Shapeshifter, a program cut live in performance at Shapeshifter Lab in Brooklyn, New York. Co-produced by Parker and label boss Steven Joerg, it featured all-new compositions, including the extended suite "Eternal Is the Voice of Love" and "Newark" (dedicated to early group member trombonist Grachan Moncur III), as well as a new iteration of the band's theme. The group comprised original members pianist Cooper Moore and alto saxophonist Rob Brown, as well as drummer Hamid Drake, who joined in 2012. The set was released in June 2019. The following year, Parker, guitarist Nels Cline, and pianist Thollem McDonas recorded the collective jam Gowanus Sessions II for ESP-Disk. He also served as bassist in an improvisational quartet with Daniel Carter, Shipp, and Gerald Cleaver on the 577 Records' album, Welcome Adventure, Vol. 1.

In January 2021, Aum Fidelity released Parker's Migration of Silence Into and Out of the Tone World. The ten-disc box was comprised of completely unreleased instrumental and vocal suites (all for women's voices) composed and recorded between 2018 and early 2020. His music drew inspiration from not only jazz and free improvisation, but musical traditions from Africa, Asia, and European sources. The settings, from solo piano to voice and piano duets to works for chamber strings and full-on orchestral jazz ensembles, paired modern and ancient instruments. Singers on these sessions included Raina Sokolov-Gonzalez, Lisa Sokolov, Ellen Christi, Kyoko Kitamura, and Andrea Wolper. Pianist Eri Yamamoto performed Parker's "Child of Sound" solo.

In September, France's Rogue Art label issued the recording of a 2019 duo concert with Shipp aptly titled Re-Union. In October, the trio of drummer Whit Dickey, Parker and Shipp released Village Mothership on Tao Forms; later that month, ESP-Disk issued the collaborative No Joke by Parker and Patricia Nicholson. January of 2022 saw the TUM release of 2 Blues for Cecil, in collaboration with drummer Andrew Cyrille and trumpeter Enrico Rava, in tribute to Cecil Taylor. In June, the second volume of his collaboration with Carter, Cleaver, and Shipp was released as Welcome Adventure, Vol. 2. That October, Parker released Universal Tonality on AUM Fidelity. Recorded as a one-off at a TriBeCa studio in December 2002, it featured 16 other musicians from various traditions, generations, and cultures, and included Grachan Moncur III, Jerome Cooper, Billy Bang, Dave Burrell, and Daniel Carter. Its six performances were captured on two discs and showcased a free jazz orchestra in the process of "breathing together" for more than two hours. ~ Thom Jurek & Chris Kelsey