If you have not yet read the two-part interview with saxophonist Ivo Perelman and pianist Matthew Shipp regarding Armageddon Flower (TAO Forms, 2025), it provides important context to the recording. The album features a quartet with those two joined by bassist William Parker and violist Mat Maneri, in a chamber-like, drummer-less session to which these four are well accustomed. The overriding takeaway from the interview is that this unit surrenders control to a higher power where collective improvisation happens almost more at a subconscious level than a conscious one. That makes sense, given that these four have worked together in various configurations for nearly thirty years, and even longer for Shipp and Parker. Prolific is an understatement regarding Perelman and Shipp, having recorded forty-six albums as a duo or in small group settings since January 1996. Surely, you’re getting the notion that this is “not their first rodeo.”

The Matthew Shipp String Trio (with Parker and Maneri) emerged in the mid-nineties, around the same time as the Perelman-Shipp duos. The unit remained dormant until 2019’s Symbolic Reality (Rogue Art, 2019) and the subsequent Vision Festival. Now, eighteen years removed from 1997’s By the Law of Music (HatART, 2002), we have the extensive, highly textured, and richly collaborative pieces on Armageddon Flower. 

On “Pillar of Light,” the music comes at you in waves. Although no one instrument is dominant, one can’t help but hear the only non-chordal instrument, Perelman’s chirping tenor. At one point, the ensemble’s sound ebbs to a minimal theme on Shipp’s piano. But the moment is fleeting before, together with Maneri and Parker, the group develops a driving motion. Perelman inserts squawks and shrieks, yet the music keeps pushing dramatically and collectively forward. Quieter moments ensue, only for the quartet to rumble into new territory. We don’t know where they are going, but they assuredly do, connected at such a high level, reaching thrilling peaks, yet descending into a hush to take it out.

Most of the music on the album has the intensity of all four players in communion, but “Tree of Life” opens with a Maneri-Perleman duo that morphs quickly into dense chords. Perelman’s darting lines take us to another place, or many places, over twenty-one minutes. The ensemble’s language is on a different plane. Sometimes it can sound like four individuals doing their own thing before you quickly realize there’s an inexplicable flow at hand. 

The title piece is only half as long as the preceding one. It begins with dark, emphatic chords, suggesting a march to who knows where. Three minutes in, the pulse becomes very vibrant and even infectious. The group continues to improvise around the figure, maintaining excitement. Yet, as before, they decelerate into a calm, lyrical but slightly unsettled close.

By the time of the closer, “Restoration,” as the title implies, the landscape we once knew no longer exists. Perelman’s sharp lines could suggest discovery or new ideas for a rebuild. The music goes in several directions as if to survey the damage and find signs of hope. It reads much like the opener, allowing one to envision all kinds of imagery. Midway through, it becomes irresistibly bouncy and practically joyous. True to the others, there is no bombastic finale, Instead, the album ends on a single piano note.

Perelman says this about the title, “I called it Armageddon Flower as an attempt to instill some hope amidst the hysteria of the times and contemplating our own extinction as a human species. This music has drama but also has the light of being saved, of the savior, whoever and whatever that is.”

Armageddon Flower is beyond transportive. It’s a “free jazz” masterpiece.

‘Armageddon Flower’ will be released on Tao Forms on June 20, 2025. It is available on Bandcamp.

Photo credit: Peter Gannushkin