Playing with Ivo is being on a path. Truer words were never spoken. In a single aphoristic sweep, equivalent to a phrase of his delicately deep pianism, Matthew Shipp charts his thirty-year trajectory with Ivo Perelman. He continues: ... We want to create a universe together, and we want an expanding universe.

Ivo Perelman observes of what he calls their deep connection, We share a similar language, but it’s constantly evolving, because he is always challenging me and I’m always trying to push him somewhere new.

Converging and diverging paths, languages and dialogues, expanding and contracting universes meeting in the intake of breath and the turn of a phrase: these guide this installment of Perelman’s Duologues series toward opposites in spiraling juxtaposition, toward the vicissitudes of freedom.

The music to which we ascribe that fraught term — a false notion only in that it neglects the price paid and investment made for each note to sound — can’t be other than it is, can’t inhabit time or space other than it does. Its communications are too direct, too immediate. For three decades, Perelman and Shipp have documented all manner of play, interplay and exchange, creating a vast catalog in continuing development. Each sonority is a dichotomy imbued with intersecting histories and the vigor of spontaneous invention.

With startling independence and touching symbiosis, the duo has developed a language of increasing intimacy. Shipp’s unique interregistral articulation, a kind of start-stop staccato and legato encompassing the keyboard, has no peer in improvised music. Perelman’s range on the tenor inhabits a similarly solitary peak of accomplishment.

Ironically, and despite the inexorable growth allowing such sonic fortitude, everything has changed, and nothing has changed; the contradiction propels the music forward.

If Bendito of Santa Cruz, their first duo collaboration from 1996, moved folk-music felicities boldly into the improvisational realms already foundational to them, Perelman and Shipp now inhabit a musical world allegiant to developments from the 1960s. The result is both blatantly tonal and not, its tropes emended and expanded to create a sonic document of youthful vitality.

1. One (Volume 1) [04:57]
2. Two (Volume 1) [03:38]
3. Three (Volume 1) [07:26]
4. Four (Volume 1) [06:43]
5. Five (Volume 1) [06:55]
6. Six (Volume 1) [05:50]
7. Seven (Volume 1) [06:33]
8. Eight (Volume 1) [06:01]
9. Nine (Volume 1) [04:47]
10. One (Volume 2) [05:14]
11. Two (Volume 2) [06:21]
12. Three (Volume 2) [06:50]
13. Four (Volume 2) [03:51]
14. Five (Volume 2) [05:16]
15. Six (Volume 2) [04:37]
16. Seven (Volume 2) [07:18]
17. Eight (Volume 2) [04:35]
18. Nine (Volume 2) [05:21]
19. Ten (Volume 2) [06:14]

Harboring types within types, tropes leading to tropes and overlapping aphorisms guiding the creative forces from motion to stasis and back, the duo open their new collective on Volume One: which begins with the pensively cautious One, the playful Two, the gently jaunty Three and the resplendent Four and then we get the pleasing Five, the rather dignified Six, and the joyful Seven, the first set rounding out on the staggered Eight and the luxuriant Nine.

Along next is Volume Two: which itself opens on the emotively sculpted One, the rhythmically alert Two, the seductive Three, the foot-tapper Four and the veritably crystalline Five, and then we get the gainful Six, the thoughtfully impassioned Seven, and the jovially-hued Eight, the second set rounding out on the effortlessly sumptuous Nine and the melodious Ten.

Musicians / Instruments:
Ivo Perelman - tenor saxophone
Matthew Shipp - piano

Volume 1 (2025) - Recorded on December 30, 2025 by Jim Clouse at Park West Studios

Volume 2 (2026) - Recorded on January 16, 2026 by Jim Clouse at Park West Studios

Official Purchase Link

Ivo Perelman @ Facebook

Ivo Perelman @ Bandcamp