Ivo Perelman

The second recordig by Ivo Perelman with a "purist" bass clarinet player. This time he is Chicago based Jason Stein, the virtuoso and the leader of several of his groups. Says Ivo: "With Rudi Mahall we connected by being foreigners; both of us were influenced by jazz but experienced a lot of non-American music growing up. With Jason there is this Jewish spirituality — or really, an overall spirituality. This is how we connected musically, it's how we responded to each other." "Spiritual Prayers" is some of the most meditative, affecting and intimate music that can be heard from Ivo Perelman.

Brazilian tenor saxophonist Ivo Perelman is a remarkably productive recording artist known for combining simple Brazilian folk themes with the techniques of free jazz. While he plays well in the heavily distorted, abstract-expressionist vein first tapped in the '60s by the Albert Ayler, he also fits nicely alongside his similarly inclined contemporaries like Elliott Levin and Ken Simon. Born in Sao Paulo in 1961, Perelman played classical guitar, cello, clarinet, trombone, and piano while growing up. At the age of 19 he adopted the tenor saxophone as his primary instrument. After arriving in the U.S., he attended the Berklee School of Music in Boston for a semester before dropping out (Perelman is purportedly a mostly self-taught player).

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