Ivo Perelman, Matthew Shipp John Edwards and Mark Sanders
Cafe Oto, London

THEY'VE made a host of albums together, but to hear the Brazilian saxophonist Ivo Perelman and US pianist Matthew Shipp playing live, supported by brilliant Londoners Mark Sanders on drums and bassist Mark Edwards, is something else entirely.

Perelman is a visual artist as well as an astonishing reedman and as soon as he begins to play his seething tenor, the blinding light of Brazil is in the scattering, windblown notes of this furious sonic colourist. Shipp rolls his keys like a great ship in a storm and Edwards’s universal twang is like a subterranean volcano.

As Perelman blows his cyclone on his horn’s highest register, Sanders’s crackling, teeming drums empathise with the stark crescendos of the saxophonist’s sound as he strikes an array of cymbals, blocks, metallic surfaces and the sides and rims of his drums with sticks and mallets.

An unexpected lyricism streams from Shipp’s keys as Perelman’s pace slackens, as if melodies are creating themselves. He leans over his instrument so intently it seems he’s about to hurl himself into the piano’s innards.

Perelman is a master of the ever-inventive and high-pitched riff, born from his love of his country’s folk tunes, though they’re now sunk into his improvising reservoir. How they come alive again from his breath and the extraordinary sounds that emerge, as if this venue is transformed into the canyons of Sao Paulo’s high-rise streets.