Ivo Perelman, Matthew Shipp, Live in Nuremberg

We all know modernity can be a mixed blessing. In music the rise of the long playing record in the '50s and then digital audio and the internet in recent times have made it possible for a great deal of music of all kinds to become available to musically minded listeners as never before. The ease of digital distribution to potentially wide audiences means that the sheer amount and variety of musical fare has opened us up to wonderful possibilities of appreciation we never might have known in previous ages, but by now there is so much, the sheer quantity is daunting. Any given release can easily be lost in the barrage. My job in part is to help alert you to the most interesting, the best, to focus on what's good out there.

All this comes into play as I sit and listen again to a very lively album of Free Improvisations/Free Jazz by two authoritative original voices of the art, tenor saxophonist Ivo Perelman and pianist Matthew Ship and their Live in Nuremberg (SMP Records). It's a very inspired set of duets recorded last June, 2019 at the Art of Improvisation Festival. I listen and appreciate how perhaps it is because of the many that we can sustain the very best, that there is no "school" of music making without a sizable classroom and the participation of a critical mass of creative souls.

Specifically, with all the improvised music available out there right now, why this album and not some other? Part of the answer is that the Perelman-Shipp collaboration brings together two mighty oaks of Open Improvisation today, each a formidable voice on his respective instrument. Most importantly the level of interaction between the two has in the recent past had a chance to blossom before our listening selves, with a series of recordings that document for us the growing significance, the flowering chemistry of intersection. (I've covered a good sampling of what they've done together lately. Type their names in the search index box above for relevant reviews.)

Live in Nuremberg puts just the two together on stage for an hour. They reach peaks of inspiration throughout, with inspired-idea after inspired-idea bouncing off one another, reaching back to allusions to classic Jazz at some points yet only with a wisp of suggestivity and then plummeting forward to present and future with soul, energy and an expressive space opening up before us in ways exciting to hear.

It is one of those recordings where the artists fall together into an inventive whirlwind that takes us all far beyond what we might have a right to expect for a purely spontaneous venture. Of course the years of preparation by both come into play and the now intimate familiarity each has with what to expect in style, sound color and substance each from the other plays a critical part in what happens in the moment on that day.

And so in the digital  maelstrom of hundreds of recent releases centered around New Jazz, with all the number of digital and physical albums available now, Live in Nuremberg stands out in spite of the clutter. Give this a few listens and you will be exposing yourself to some of the most consistently inspired and energized examples of the art of improvisation today.

Do not hesitate! Grab onto this one.