Ivo Perelman Interview at Ni Kantu (my blog)

[clifford_thornton]

Perhaps I should have broken this up into several posts, but here's the whole shebang...

Ivo

[B. Clugston]

Nice interview, Clifford, done with your usual thoroughness. Really enjoyed reading that. Perelman is one saxophonist I need to hear more of.

[clifford_thornton]

Thanks - yeah, Ivo's got some real corkers.

[robertoart]

Just what is it with Free Jazz and Abstract Expressionism

You don't have to go to Berklee to 'hear' Charlie Parker, but you do have to put some effort in.

It ain't 'natural' unless you've been culturally weaned on it.

Edited June 29, 2013 by freelancer

[robertoart]

And also...the Perelman paintings just aren't very good. They barely deserve anything more than lip service when considered beyond his personal creativity.

They don't demonstrate anything like the kind of study and 'muscle' relationship that he so obviously has with his music.

I doubt that anyone in this day and age really has significant things to contribute in both serious improv and serious painting in 'both' disciplines these days. Painting and Jazz/improv are two of the most demanding things.

My experience with people who maintain practice in both art forms is that one will be considerably more developed and 'progressive' than the other.

For instance, people with the kind of 'muscle' relationship to Painting Perelman describes, will often be competent or very good players of 'closed musical systems' like Be Bop or Trad or perhaps Classical Piano. But rarely to the musical-visionary level Perelman is.

And vice versa, the 'art' of extremely dedicated and visionary musicians is usually devoid of any true robust Visual-art integrity.

[Lazaro Vega]

Clifford: how do you pronounce his first name?

[clifford_thornton]

ee-voh

also, freelancer, why the intense pile-on? I mean, you're free to voice your opinion and sure, I don't think Ivo would classify his paintings on the level of Pollock or Newman, but beyond that, he's an interesting guy and an insightful person. I did catch your jibe on Peter Evans and the "interview idea" which honestly just came across as unfriendly rather than an honest suggestion.

[robertoart]

ee-voh

also, freelancer, why the intense pile-on? I mean, you're free to voice your opinion and sure, I don't think Ivo would classify his paintings on the level of Pollock or Newman, but beyond that, he's an interesting guy and an insightful person. I did catch your jibe on Peter Evans and the "interview idea" which honestly just came across as unfriendly rather than an honest suggestion.

No, I really thought an interview with him (Evans), would be really interesting. I would love to read one of those younger indie/Jazz/improv guys open up as honestly and guilelessly as Perelman does. Although Ethan Iverson does do this on his blogs to a certain extant. I thought the This Is Our Music Cover, piss-take was a bit off really, and kinda underplays the cultural elements still happening in music now. I guess this would be something very peripheral to those musicians.

I also really thought your Perelman interview was fantastic actually. I enjoyed reading it and his ideas/insights. And will return to it again. The molecular stuff is beautifully sincere but a bit naive and harkens back to the hippie things Hendrix used to say about a 'pure' kind of music. This is the kind of honest and visionary stuff that would be laughed out of the 'ironic' pop-culture' Contemporary Art climate. But the things about an almost 'correlationist' battle between 'man and metal' is really interesting. And he is also very insightful when he talks about the way Visual artists are more practised at using language to describe their disciplines.

Perhaps also the reason most "Contemporary Artists aren't into serious and advanced music is probably because Contemporary Art has a total investment in a kind of dialectical relationship with subverting, aestheticising and critiquing Contemporary mainstream issues, through image and text, so they gravitate to music that they can relate too. Visual Artists are incredibly aware of Art-film culture and Critical Theory, but Art-music beyond anything word-based and Indie is of no interest to them mostly. If it's beyond Sonic Youth or The Velvets - or anything 'cool' instrumental/minimalist like The Necks or Dirty Three, it's too far 'distant' for them.

I really do think the connection in the past between Abstract Expressionism-Colour Field and Jazz was a mostly romantic rather than real one though.

And served it's purposes more for convenience, and kinda masked the huge 'divide' between the two worlds of Black American music language and 'Heroic White American Art'.