Brazilian tenor man Perelman is probably best known for his enduring partnership with pianist Matthew Shipp, which has found voice on dozens of albums, both as a duo and alongside other heavyweights such as William Parker. But he’s also a serial collaborator, keen to immerse himself in other contexts. Moreover, while there’s something about Shipp’s cerebral urgency that brings out Perelman’s most dramatic statements, it’s in these less familiar settings that we hear a different side of Perelman: less concerned with extremes; more playful, even. He brings that energy to these two new releases.

Cuban pianist Aruán Ortiz is a deep-thinking stylist who applies a poised intensity to every date, so it’s interesting to hear him and Perelman teamed with young US cellist Lester St Louis, a key figure in the late Jaimie Branch’s Fly Or Die band, which mixed the avant-garde with the accessible to glorious effect. As a trio, they’re conspicuously unbeholden to convention.

Across two 20-minute improvisations, they conjure a deceptively dolorous mood that belies the evident fun they’re having in sustaining a tantalising tension. St Louis deals solemn drones, plodding strokes and rough scrapes, Ortiz offers sparse clusters and low rumbles while Perelman, for the most part, resists overblown pyrotechnics. A sense of restraint presides.

A more puckish quickening of energies can be found on the duo with guitarist James Emery. Co-founder of the Sting Trio of New York with violinist Billy Bang and bassist John Lindberg, Emery has also worked with avant-iconoclasts such as Anthony Braxton, Wadada Leo Smith and Henry Threadgill. On the album’s 13 short pieces, he plays with a quietly dampened attack that foregrounds the physical properties of the strings, providing plenty of space for densely packed runs full of taut pings and unexpected twangs, and pushing Perelman to spiral into more typically frenzied territory. When Emery begins a thuggishly percussive thwacking of the neck, you can feel Perelman’s eyes rolling into the back of his head as his ultra-altissimo squeals rise high but, again, there’s an overall control and sensitivity that makes this one of Perelman’s more enjoyable recent releases.