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Jane Ira Bloom

Wingwalker

Outline Records

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NEW SCHOOL MINUTE: Jane Ira Bloom, 'Deep Edges; Improvising Slow Songs' | The New School
Jane Ira Bloom: Valuing Choices Made in the Moment
2018 Grammy Winners for Best Surround Sound: Jane Ira Bloom, Jim Anderson, Darcy Proper
1 Her Exacting Light  
2 Life on Cloud 8  
3 Ending Red Songs  
4 Freud's Convertible  
5 Airspace  
6 Frontiers in Science  
7 Rooftops Speak Dreams  
8 Rookie  
9 Adjusting to Midnight  
10 Live Sports  
11 Wingwalker  
12 I Could Have Danced All Night  
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Whether adventuring into interior or outer space in her music, award winning soprano saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom continues to navigate her unique musical path with creative abandon. Wingwalker, her 14th album as leader and fourth album on the Outline label reunites Bloom with long-time bandmates Dawn Clement on piano, bassist Mark Helias, and drummer Bobby Previte. After two years since Bloom's last release "Mental Weather," she brought the band together in June 2010 to record new compositions written during time made possible by a Guggenheim Fellowship. Wingwalker was recorded in Avatar Studio B in New York City with renowned audio engineer Jim Anderson. The album features eleven Bloom originals and a solo sax rendition of Lerner & Lowe's classic "I Could Have Danced All Night." From the groove inspired "Life on Cloud 8" to the spare simplicity of "Adjusting to Midnight," Jane has journeyed further into jazz dimensions without a safety net. The CD also features an extra mp3 downloadable version of the music condensed into a 5 minute 49 second event.

  • Jane Ira Bloom has a poetic and cosmic artistry / JAZZ.FM91
    Posted At: March 30, 2023
    JAZZ.FM91 - John Devenish writes….Poetry set to music is a most natural thing. Read aloud, its rhythms and meter make it a very close relation. For me, one of the instruments that best matches the phrasing and soundscape of poetry read aloud is the soprano sax. It is because it has so many sonic options and varieties of sound that match the human voice and human emotions. So much of how music affects the li...

  • All the horns in the saxophone family have challenges. JazzBluesNews interviews Jane Ira Bloom
    Posted At: February 16, 2023
    Soaring, poetic, quick silver, spontaneous and instantly identifiable are words used to describe the soprano sound of saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom. She's been steadfastly developing her singular voice on the soprano saxophone for over 40 years creating a body of music that marks her as an American original. She is a pioneer in the use of live electronics and movement in jazz, as well as the possessor of "one ...

  • JANE IRA BLOOM: PICTURING THE INVISIBLE: FOCUS 1 makes 'Jazz History Online's 2022 BEST OF THE REST: INSTRUMENTAL'
    Posted At: December 31, 2022
    Picturing The Invisible – Focus 1 is a selection of compositions by saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom inspired by the science photography of legendary NYC photographer Berenice Abbott, arranged for duet during the pandemic and recorded remotely in high definition immersive sound by audio engineer Ulrike Schwarz. Award winning jazz soprano saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom pairs with renowned improvisors drummer Allison M...

  • 'Picturing the Invisible: Focus 1' featured on January 2023 - MIX cover
    Posted At: December 30, 2022
    The latest GRAMMY-nominated recording by engineer/producer duo Ulrike Schwarz and Jim Anderson, Picturing the Invisible: Focus 1, is featured on this month’s digital cover of MIX. The 4-page story highlights the mind-boggling recording process that “pushed [soprano saxophonist and composer Jane Ira Bloom] to the creative limits,” and ultimately led to a nomination for Best Immersive Audio Album at the 65th ...

  • Inside Jane Ira Bloom's 'Picturing The Invisible' and the role of merging technologies / headliner Q&A with Ulrike Schwarz
    Posted At: December 28, 2022
    Ulrike Schwarz is a sound engineer of acoustic music in the radio, television and recording industries for internationally recognized productions. Her recordings have received multiple German and international awards and nominations and have received two Echo Klassik Awards, Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenindustrie, Ars Acoustica, Diapason d’Or and many others. In August 2014, the Echo Klassik for Ensembl...

  • Immersed in a world of jazz and space, Jane Ira Bloom, on her musical journey / Our Town
    Posted At: December 5, 2022
    Our Town's ANGELA BARBUTI writes….Jane Ira Bloom began playing the saxophone at age 9 and said she choose the instrument because it was shiny. “It’s a fact. It was public school; they gave you a list,” said Bloom, a Boston native. “You could choose what instrument you wanted to play, and it looked so great in the case.”A graduate of the Yale School of Music, she first moved to Chelsea in 1979 with her colle...

  • 'Persimmon Tree' Q&A's with Jane Ira Bloom
    Posted At: November 1, 2021

    Soaring, poetic, quicksilver, spontaneous, and instantly identifiable are words used to describe the soprano sound of saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom. She's been steadfastly developing her singular voice on the soprano saxophone for over 40 years. She won the 2018 Grammy Award for Best Surround Sound Album for her trio album Early Americans. Jane Ira Bloom recently sat for an interview with Persimmon Tree...

  • Jane Ira Bloom's astounding voyage / improv exchange
    Posted At: October 27, 2021
    improv exchange - Leander writes….Soaring, poetic, quicksilver, spontaneous, and instantly identifiable are words used to describe the soprano sound of saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom. She’s been steadfastly developing her singular voice on the soprano saxophone for over 40 years creating a body of music that marks her as an American original. She is a pioneer in the use of live electronics and movement in jazz,...

  • Jane Ira Bloom sits down with ImprovExchange
    Posted At: October 1, 2021

    In March and April of 2021 soprano saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom and drummer Allison Miller came together on five Tuesdays to record some improvised duets to see what might happen. They didn't set out to make an album - they just wanted to play because they needed to improvise any way that they could. They played with complete abandon, performing remotely from their home studios in New York City in the ...

  • Jane Ira Bloom chats with 'Tuesday Lunch with Abe'
    Posted At: May 17, 2021

    Soprano saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom and bassist Mark Helias come together to create duets discovered in the moment in a way that is rarely heard today with Some Kind of Tomorrow. The long time bandmates, separated by space and time find a way to play in real time with one another and the results are magical. Two master improvisers and composers bring listeners up-close and persona...

  • Mark Helias on pandemic collaborations / Contrabass Conversations
    Posted At: April 18, 2021

    Contrabass Conversations writes......Mark Helias is a renowned bassist, composer and producer who has performed throughout the world for more than four decades with some of the most important and innovative musicians in Jazz and Improvised Music including Don Cherry, Edward Blackwell, Anthony Davis, Dewey Redman, Anthony Braxton, Abbey Lincoln, Cecil Taylor, and Uri Caine.  Mark recently released So...

  • Jane Ira Bloom trio set for Brooklyn's 'ShapeShifter Lab' / Jazz-Quad
    Posted At: February 8, 2020

    Soprano saxophonist/composer and NASA artist Jane Ira Bloom brings her trio for the first time to Brooklyn NY - ShapeShifter Lab on March 13 performing with long-time bandmates bassist Mark Helias and drummer Matt Wilson. A pioneer in the use of live electronics and movement in jazz, Bloom's been leading bands into new creative territory for over 40 years. She is a multi-time winner of the ...

  • Jane Ira Bloom set to 'key in the morning' on Deutschlandfunk Kultur
    Posted At: July 22, 2019

    On Monday, August 26 / Key in the morning at 11:45 am, Deutschlandfunk Kultur presents a Portrait of the soprano saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom. The soprano saxophone is not always taken for full in jazz, quite often it is additional instrument to alto or tenor saxophone. A few musicians have focused exclusively on the higher, usually unbent, saxophone. From a distance it is easy to confuse it with a clarine...

  • Jane Ira Bloom makes Vanity Fair - Sisters of Swing
    Posted At: July 9, 2019

    For a century, jazz was a men's club. Half a century ago, the acclaimed music critic George T. Simon said everything you need to know about sexism in jazz: "Only God can make a tree, and only men can play good jazz." This gender bias has deep roots. Jazz has always been a boys' club, a macho art form reserved for brash, fast-fingered men living on the road, in cramped quarters, hustling from gig to ...

  • Congratulations to winners and nominees of 24th annual JJA awards
    Posted At: May 2, 2019

    Congratulations to all the winners of the 24th annual Jazz Journalists Association Jazz Awards. Professional Journalist Members of the JJA made open nominations in a first selection round; those who received the most nominations advanced to the final ballot. Our congratulations, also to the 2019 Nominees in all categories 2019 JJA Jazz Awards winners will receive their awards during performances or other...

  • Jane Ira Bloom, Jim Anderson & Ulrike Schwarz team up for Dolby Atmos demo at 'High End Munich' / Jazz Quad
    Posted At: April 24, 2019

    What happens when you combine the singular sound of award winning soprano saxophonist & NASA artist Jane Ira Bloom with the technical artistry of legendary audio engineer Jim Anderson and tonmeister Ulrike Schwarz? The surround sound Grammy winning team has upped their game to showcase excerpts from their latest project which features Bloom's albums "Sixteen Sunsets" "Early Americans" & "Wild...

  • Jane Ira Bloom's upcoming Yale Jazz Festival date makes JAZZIZ 'best this week'
    Posted At: March 29, 2019

    Award-winning soprano saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom will make her return to Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut for a performance with her quartet at the Yale Jazz Festival on April 12. She will be joined by longtime bandmates drummer Bobby Previte, keyboardist Dominic Fallacaro and bassist Cameron Brown for an evening of high wire improvisations on the groove, performing selections from her Like Silv...

  • Exceptions define Jane Ira Bloom / NEWMUSICBOX
    Posted At: September 3, 2018

    While thinking beyond musical genres is a hallmark of a great many of today's musical creators, Jane Ira Bloom clearly maneuvers within a genre while at the same time subverting any attempt at making generalizations about her work. The primary mode of music-making she engages in is performing her own instrumental compositions on the soprano saxophone in the company of a small group of like-minded collabo...

  • Jane ira Bloom chases the formal and kinetic properties of Jackson Pollock / Playing Changes
    Posted At: June 25, 2018

    At the end of Playing Changes is a list: The 129 Essential Albums of the Twenty-First Century (So Far). I organized these by year, and then alphabetically by artist name. I'll be running them down here, in that order. (No one appears more than once as a leader, though there's ample overlap in personnel.) Jane Ira Bloom is a soprano saxophonist whose track record of excellence goes back more than ...

  • Women Set the Agenda, and a New Precedent, at the Jazz Journalists Association Awards / WBGO
    Posted At: June 17, 2018

    The Jazz Journalists Association Awards is an annual ritual for writers, musicians, and music industry types. On Tuesday evening June 13, the hundred or so people gathered at The New School's Theresa Lang Center crowded into the frame. The man with the camera (writer-photographer Michael Jackson) commanded his subjects to "squeeze in," a process that kept everyone on their toes, quite literally, and brou...

  • Jane Ira Bloom's 'Wild Lines' is melodic, slinky, gently fizzy, and goes down easy / blogcritics
    Posted At: April 27, 2018

    Also in 2017, adventurous soprano sax artist Jane Ira Bloom forayed into spoken-word with Wild Lines: Improvising Emily Dickinson. A set of understated jazz compositions inspired by poems by the Belle of Amherst, the release comes in two flavors: the music-only Disc 1, and the same pieces in a different order accompanied by actor Deborah Rush reading the poems on Disc 2. The riff-rich music, melodic, sli...

  • Jane Ira Bloom quartet performs 'Wild Lines' at Yamaha Piano Salon / 88.3WBGO
    Posted At: April 19, 2018

    The spare, evocative poetry of Emily Dickinson has inspired no shortage of musical interpretation - notably by classical composers ranging from Samuel Barber to Aaron Copland to Elliot Carter. But the soprano saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom finds a new register for this impulse with Wild Lines: Improvising Emily Dickinson, originally released on Outline Music last fall.  The album features an ace rhy...

  • The Epoch Times interviews Jane Ira Bloom
    Posted At: April 15, 2018

    Jane Ira Bloom and her quartet appeared at New York's Baruch Performing Arts Center as part of the Milt Hinton Jazz Perspectives Concert Series. She and her group performed music from her latest recording, "Wild Lines: Improvising Emily Dickinson" (on Outline). This is a double-CD set, one with just music and the other with the musicians accompanying readings from Dickinson's work. Her group on both...

  • NEW SCHOOL faculty member Jane Ira Bloom wins GRAMMY / THE NEW SCHOOL NEWS
    Posted At: February 1, 2018

    College of Performing Arts at The New School is in good company, as many current faculty and alumni were recently awarded and nominated for Grammys at the 60th Annual Grammy Awards. Musicians, singers, and producers from Mannes School of Music, School of Jazz and Contemporary Music, and School of Drama were recognized across various genres for their contributions. Faculty member and acclaimed soprano sax...

  • The interesting GRAMMY's are given out off camera / stereophile
    Posted At: January 31, 2018

    It is a given these days that the Grammy Awards telecast has devolved into a not very interesting TV variety show. And that most of the really interesting awards are given out off-camera the day before. The great New York City jazz label Mack Avenue Records deserved to win three Grammy Awards for records by Cecile McLorin Salvant and Billy Childs. In the audiophile world, old friend and audio engineer pa...

  • Jane Ira Bloom, Jim Anderson - Early Americans wins 2018 GRAMMY for 'Best Surround Sound Album'
    Posted At: January 28, 2018

    Early Americans is Jane Ira Bloom's first trio album, sixteenth as leader and sixth recording on the Outline label. Joined by long-time bandmates Mark Helias on bass & drummer Bobby Previte and with over fifty years of shared musical history together the album recording capture their breathtaking sound in both stereo and surround-sound with renowned audio engineer Jim Anderson. The album features...

  • Jane Ira Bloom's cross-disciplinary thinking. Wild Lines, Improvising Emily Dickinson / Jazziz
    Posted At: January 23, 2018

    American original Jane Ira Bloom does it again. This time the 21st-century soprano saxophonist reimagines the poetry of 19th-century visionary Emily Dickinson in two different settings. This new 2 CD pack, has the quartet (Dawn Clement (piano), Mark Helias (bass)& Bobby Previte (drums) interpretating Dickinson's poetry both instrumentaly and in spoken word settings that feature readings by popula...

  • 91.5 Omaha Public Radio - Last Call, celebrates 22 years on the air
    Posted At: January 21, 2018

    Last Call celebrates 22 years on KIOS: Omaha NE. On January 27th, Last Call will step back into the record library for a breathtaking series of performances from Jaco Pastorius and his Word of Mouth Big Band. and share with you an exciting new release from superstars Chick Corea & Steve Gadd. Plus our program will feature some of the best adventuresome jazz recordings from 2017 from Matt Wilson, Jane...

  • Jane Ira Bloom - Wild LInes, Improvising Emily Dickinson gets #21 spot in 2017 NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll
    Posted At: December 20, 2017

    American original Jane Ira Bloom does it again. This time the 21st-century soprano saxophonist reimagines the poetry of 19th-century visionary Emily Dickinson in two different settings. This new 2 CD pack, has the quartet (Dawn Clement (piano), Mark Helias (bass)& Bobby Previte (drums) interpretating Dickinson's poetry both instrumentaly and in spoken word settings that feature readings by popula...

  • Jane Ira Bloom - Wild LInes, Improvising Emily Dickinson makes textura '2017 top 10s & 20s'
    Posted At: December 14, 2017

    Is there a sound in jazz more instantly identifiable than Jane Ira Bloom's soprano saxophone? Even from the earliest days of her career, her ‘voice' has seemed to be resoundingly in place, and the decades since she first emerged haven't witnessed a significant alteration in that identity so much as an ongoing refinement. That her playing is at its customary high level on Wild Lines...

  • Improvising Emily Dickinson matches Jane Ira Bloom with one of America's most enigmatic poets / Straight No Chaser
    Posted At: December 12, 2017

    The use of poetry by jazz artists as inspiration or collaboration is one of the most welcome trends of the past few years. There is often a great link between the poet and the musician, as they play with shaded tones and meanings, textures and allusions, following or breaking rules as suits their artistic goals.  Jane Ira Bloom's Wild Lines: Improvising Emily Dickinson matches one of our great sopra...

  • Jane Ira Bloom - Early Americans gets 2018 GRAMMY nomination
    Posted At: November 28, 2017

    After the success of Jane Ira Bloom's 2014 all-ballads release "Sixteen Sunsets" the sopranist shifted into another gear for the Sono Luminus label, showcasing the kinetic energy of her acclaimed trio on - Early Americans. Her first trio album, sixteenth as leader, and sixth on the Outline label, Bloom's sound is like no other on the straight horn and she lets it fly on every track. Joined by lon...

  • Jane Ira Bloom - Wild LInes is an exemplary album of poetry-inspired jazz / New York City Jazz Record
    Posted At: November 27, 2017

    THE NEW YORK CITY JAZZ RECORD | DECEMBER 2017 Wild Lines: Improvising Emily Dickinson Jane Ira Bloom (Out-Line)  by George Kanzler  Essentially, this is two CDs of (largely) the same music. The first is instrumental, delivered by soprano saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom with pianist Dawn Clement, bassist Mark Helias and drummer Bobby Previte. The second CD revisits the same tunes, in sl...

  • 'Poet of the soprano saxophone' honors one of America's iconic poets / MAKING A SCENE
    Posted At: November 6, 2017

    It seems only appropriate that the artist dubbed "the poet of the soprano saxophone" by acclaimed jazz critic Brian Priestly would honor one of America's iconic poets. Jane Ira Bloom reimagines the poetry of 19th-century visionary Emily Dickinson in two different settings. Her double CD showcases her jazz quartet's interpretation of Dickinson's poetry and includes a second version for jazz quartet and sp...

  • Wild Lines unleashes the lavish lyricism of Jane Ira Bloom's quartet / JazzTimes
    Posted At: November 2, 2017

    Jane Ira Bloom does it again. This time the 21st-century soprano saxophonist reimagines the poetry of 19th-century visionary Emily Dickinson in two different settings. This new 2 CD pack, has the quartet (Dawn Clement (piano), Mark Helias (bass)& Bobby Previte (drums) interpretating Dickinson's poetry both instrumentaly and in spoken word settings that feature readings by popular stage & film...

  • Jane Ira Bloom - Wild LInes, Improvising Emily Dickinson / Audiophile Audition review
    Posted At: October 20, 2017

    (Jane Ira Bloom; soprano/ Dawn Clement; piano/ Mark Helias; Bass/ Bobby Previte; drums/ Deborah Rush; voice) The idea of a modern jazz quartet taking its inspiration from the poetry of Emily Dickinson is ingenious but not obvious. By the standards of her poet-contemporaries she was deliberately unmusical–staccato, dissonant and ironical–features more readily associated with modernistic po...
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