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Donald's Encyclopedia of Popular MusicA B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y ZBLOOM, Jane Ira(b 1955, Newton MA) Soprano saxophone, also alto. She is a musician who recovers jazz as something new and different rather than a retread of the mainstream. She started on alto sax at age eight or nine, took up soprano at twelve, studying with Joe Viola in Boston. She studied at Berklee and went to Yale '72 where she met other unique players like George Lewis and Leo Smith; studied with George Coleman late '70 and began recording. By then her relationship with the difficult soprano sax, she said later, was as though it had chosen her, rather than the other way round. Her first two albums on her own Outline label '79-80 were duos with bassist Kent McLagen, We Are Outline and Second Wind, the second with pianist Larry Karush ( 27 August 2013, age 66), Dave Friedman on vibes and/or Frank Bennett on drums on various tracks; she also recorded with Karush on vocalist Jay Clayton's All Out '80 on Anima, with Friedman on his Of The Wind's Eye '81 on Enja. Mighty Lights '82 on Enja was a quartet with pianist Fred Hersch, Charlie Haden and Ed Blackwell; she recorded in an octet with reedman Frederick Hand on his Jazz Antiqua '83 for the Musical Heritage Society, a mail-order record club. As One '84 on JMT was a duo with Hersch. Not a busy player, her phrases had space in them, particularly affecting on ballads. In the mid-'80s she began using 'live' electronics, such as a pitch shifter and a digital delay, refusing to use a pickup on the instrument itself, the object being to add colours while retaining the phrase length and natural sound of the saxophone; she had also worked with dance groups and began writing for larger ensembles, but her opportunities to record remained with smaller groups. Modern Drama '87 on Columbia was a quartet with Hersch, Ratzo Harris on acoustic and electric bass, Tom Rainey on drums, guests including Friedman, her tone extended using an octave divider e.g. on opener 'Overstars'; Slalom '88 had just the quartet, the tone-painter's harmonies, melodies and playfulness triumphant: both were on Columbia and soon deleted, Modern Drama reissued on Koch '97. Art And Aviation '92 included versions of pieces commissioned by NASA played by an entirely new septet with Ron Horton and Kenny Wheeler on trumpets, The Nearness '95 was a sextet with Wheeler and Julian Priester, both on Arabesque Jazz. In '94 she described her electronic setup as archaic: it does what she wants it to do, no more; while Hersch once described their work together as jazz without a safety net. Which is the way it is supposed to be. Bill Barton in Signal To Noise said that she had made seven recordings with Hersch and one with Kenny Werner on piano, then welcomed Mental Weather 2008 on Outline with Seatle-based Dawn Clement, plus Mark Helias on bass and Matt Wilson on drums. |