Ivo Perelman & Matthew Shipp String Trio - Armageddon Flower

Jazz

Music to Nourish the Intellect, And the Soul

There is music we stumble upon in the crisp packaging of a CD, and then there is music that demands to be experienced live before we immortalize it in physical form, a souvenir not of nostalgia, but of transcendence. Armageddon Flower, the latest recording from a reconstituted Matthew Shipp String Trio, belongs firmly in the latter category. This is not background music, not easily consumed or conveniently sliced into radio-sized portions. It is, instead, a profound offering, created by four master improvisers, that challenges and elevates the very notion of what jazz, and art itself, can be.

I am not a believer in any conventional religious sense, and thus I won’t pretend to weigh in on whether turning to the Bible as a conceptual springboard for musical creation is inherently virtuous or problematic. What matters here is the result, and Armageddon Flower is, without a doubt, a masterwork. It is a towering summit of musical dialogue, shaped by four artists whose individual careers already read like seismic events in contemporary music. The recording explores language, physics, tradition, and energy in ways that feel not only fresh, but necessary.

The trio, pianist Matthew Shipp, bassist William Parker, and violinist Mat Maneri, reconvened in late 2024 to record with tenor saxophonist Ivo Perelman, himself a relentless explorer of the musical psyche. The outcome is a body of work that can only be described as intellectually and spiritually rigorous. It’s not just improvised music; it’s a form of communication bordering on telepathy. The pieces unfold slowly, deliberately, as though time itself bends around the gravity of the ideas being exchanged.

To be clear, this is not music for the passive listener. These compositions, or rather, these sonic events, require a kind of mental and emotional literacy. They are not built for easy consumption; there is no concession to mainstream length or structure. Instead, the album’s tracks stretch to 16, 19, even 21 minutes, allowing each thought, each musical utterance, the full space it needs to live and evolve. In an age of diminishing attention spans, this feels not only bold, but radical.

There is an inherent risk in music so open, so unbound, it demands an audience willing to listen with both intellect and heart. But that is precisely what makes Armageddon Flower so rewarding. Like reading a complex literary text or standing in front of a challenging painting, the listener must meet the music halfway. This is, in the truest sense, high art, improvised music that engages with both the spiritual and the philosophical.

The history between Shipp and Perelman is rich. Since 1996, the two have recorded extensively, often in duo or intimate ensemble formats. But as Shipp himself notes, “There is only one Matthew Shipp String Trio.” In the early 2000s, the trio carved out a distinctive space in the so-called Third Stream movement, a hybrid of jazz and classical chamber music, releasing two landmark albums on the Hat Hut label. Armageddon Flower extends that narrative with deeper maturity and refined urgency. “William and Mat are the closest thing I have to soul brothers, and by soul, I mean true soul,” Shipp explains. “Ivo represents another stratum of that same soul.”

What’s being said in these extended conversations between musicians is impossible to pin down. Each listener will experience it differently. But what’s unmistakable is the sense of necessity, of existential striving, that animates every note. Perelman himself offers this reflection on the album’s title and its wider implications:
“Listening to this music is like reading the Book of Revelation. I called it Armageddon Flower as an attempt to inject a little hope into the ambient hysteria, into our collective contemplation of the extinction of the human species. This music carries drama, yes, but also the light of salvation, whatever or whoever that may be.”

It’s a striking sentiment, one that encapsulates the paradox at the heart of this recording. The music is both apocalyptic and redemptive, cerebral and visceral. It speaks to the chaos of our world and the glimmer of beauty that still survives within it.

So if you are someone who seeks art not as a distraction but as a necessity ,if you believe that music can, and should, engage with our highest aspirations and deepest fears, then Armageddon Flower will speak to you. Not in words, but in a language far older, and far more essential.

Thierry De Clemensat
Member at Jazz Journalists Association
USA correspondent for Paris-Move and ABS magazine
Editor in chief – Bayou Blue Radio, Bayou Blue News

PARIS-MOVE, May 29th 2025

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