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Armageddon Flower on CD

The seminal Matthew Shipp String Trio (Shipp: piano; Mat Maneri: viola; William Parker: bass) reconvened to commune with tenor saxophonist Ivo Perelman, and Armageddon Flower is the epic result. This album is a peak gem in each of their extensive bodies of work, revealing new ways of exemplifying tradition, language, physics, material, and energy. A profound work presenting improvised communication at it's highest level.

Since 1996 Perelman & Shipp have recorded 46 albums together in duo and small group settings. But as Shipp is careful to point out, "there's only one Matthew Shipp String Trio." At the turn of the century, this Trio struck out on a path to redefine "Third Stream" chamber jazz via two very well-received Hat Hut CDs. A quarter century later, this new work clearly builds on extensive, musically interwoven personal history. For Shipp, "William and Mat are as close to my natural soul brothers as you can get-and by soul I mean the soul. Ivo is another layer of that same soul."

Perelman's copious studio dates - beginning with his self-titled Ivo (1989) - are a continual refinement and study in process whether or not they share personnel, and countless gems reside in his vast body of work. Armageddon Flower is a singular gem in the entire body of improvised music.

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This work is fundamentally a group music; while there are sections of duo and trio interaction, the onus is on a four-way conversation in which parallel streams become oceans of sound, only to be distilled into isolated rivulets once again. Without a drummer but with forward motion and bounce, the music on Armageddon Flower is sublimely striking and operates in a continuous flow of both impulsion and idea.

As these four musicians have spent decades together in various capacities, their language is on one level honed. What's surprising is that entirely new pathways are exploding into view. It's unquestionable that this is music of necessity, of striving, and of possibility.