Outline
2008
Mental Weather
About This Album
Jane Ira Bloom's consistently high art and depth-of-field viewpoint in jazz has been evident since the beginning of her substantive career. She's recorded for major and secondary labels, been a crafter of music for NASA, and led her own original modern jazz groups for four decades. With this new release, she returns to her roots, in a way, for the Outline label, where her first albums were produced and distributed. But her music has advanced to a point where it is so distinctive, and you know you are hearing the soprano sax and live electronics of Jane Ira Bloom in the first few notes. This quartet session teams her with the vaunted and tasteful drummer Matt Wilson, longtime bandmate, bassist Mark Helias, and newcomer pianist Dawn Clement. As usual the music is quicksilver elusive, harmonically rich and prescient beyond the jazz realm. Improvisational sculpting is more Bloom's forté than simple song structures. You will hear dynamism personified in the chiming tiny bell inferences and incredible interplay by all four instrumentalists on "Ready for Anything," and the swirling discourse similar to a driving rain shower and upper atmosphere imagery of cloud movement during the live electronics underscoring the title track.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4 and 5)

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