Brazilian saxophonist Perelman’s recent appearance at London’s Hundred Years Gallery saw him take the bold step of working with strings and voices, but this performance finds him in the more familiar duo with American pianist Matthew Shipp. Their longstanding relationship and voluminous discography make them one of the most notable ‘bands’ in contemporary improvised music, their strength of sound and stream of ideas often generating as much energy as a bigger group. In any case this gig at The Art of Improvisation festival in Nuremberg finds the duo on zestful form. Aficionados will recognise features of the vocabulary the two men have crafted over time – Perelman’s scything fortissimo with the kind of hard, flinty edges that show the tenor as a primal force; Shipp’s smartly staggered rhythmic turbulence; the avoidance of predictable tension and release strategies. Running to almost an hour the composition-exploration produces a peculiar beauty in the moments of peak momentum, which sometimes sees the two men agitate back and forth through a semi-tone but still find enough variation to hold the interest. Or Perelman may hit a piping hot high while Shipp unleashes a tidal wave of organic sub-bass before both players boil everything down to one starkly hammered note. Like their illustrious ‘New Thing’ predecessors, Shipp and Perelman create uncompromisingly visceral feelings that move between violence and tenderness, and their historic and cultural odyssey turns from artful distillations of Monk to cheeky suggestions of Rameau. In the hands of these masters, confrontation, insolence and innocence are kith and kin. Both demanding and gripping this music is a very boldface Bye-ya to ‘Frère Jacques’.