Ivo Perelman, Matthew Shipp, William Parker, Bobby Kapp, Ineffable Joy

A wonderful quartet outing forms one of the latest in the billowingly targeted collaborations between tenor saxman Ivo Perelman and pianist Matthew Shipp. Ineffable Joy (ESP 5036) brings back longtime Shipp collaborator bassist William Parker and drummer vet Bobby Kapp on a freewheeling eight-numbered studio date.

This one really feels as quartet-like as it is, in that everybody occupies an instrument zone that forwards the free-rhythm-with-soloists idea that evolved into a foundation of "Free Jazz" in the sixties. That is not to say that the playing is derivative because it is not. It is just that it is part of a whole in avant music making that has a history, and that it makes it all new at the same time as it belongs to a special way of quartet-ing.

So we have Maestro Parker striding, bowing, and carrying forth in ways that punctuate and open up Maestro Kapp to swing-beyond-swing zones and set up Maestros Shipp and Perelman to be freely where it seems right and in the now of things.

And in the process the rhythm team inspires some extraordinary soloing collectively and individually from tenor and piano, not to mention excellent rhythm team inventions in themselves. By now we have four masters of open form in an ultra-hip committal to making the most of every musical moment.

You listen and you hear the history of the form but you hear too the culmination of it all into where these four were in the very moment of the studio date at hand.

Compare the near balladic "Ebullience" with the somewhat more dense and up "Bliss" and you in a way have the right-now analogue parallel to "Cool Blues" and "Koko?" Not exactly yet this is a part of the continuum in time and aural space and an important part at that.

So get in with this one and be in with the present example of improvisatory music at its finest. Outstanding!