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Jane Ira Bloom: Wingwalker
ByWith live electronics melded in with an upwardly soaring and downward-spiraling saxophone, Wingwalker is almost otherworldly. The ethereal beauty of the charts exist in what feels like a parallel universe that gently whirls and rotates in what appears to mirror and reflect tunes that appear fleetingly familiar as they skitter and slide into a realm that is at once unfamiliar and awesome and yet one that is superbly natural and tangible. The music here is also playful, as in "Life on Cloud 8" and "Rookie," not only for their affectionately tongue-in-cheek titles, but also for the childlike wonder in which the elements of melody and harmony are strung together. The blurred boundaries of the science of the mind meet the avant-garde of tone and timbre in "Freud's Convertible" and "Rooftops Speak Dreams."
The seemingly disjointed, even disconnected narrative that weaves in and out of the songs of the album actually inhabit a specific time and space compendium, but in a nebulous cosmos. Like a continuous air fraught with mystery and magic, Bloom floats from one song to the other, egged on by the pulsations of Mark Helias' bass. She is hand in glove, of course, with pianist Dawn Clement. The two musicians appear to be alter egos. The wild ululations of Bloom's saxophoneas she wails and whoops in short and long lines that turn her tantalizing melodies inside outare matched with swing and verve by Clement's joyous harmony, chorus upon chorus. The diaphanous expanse of the music also owes much to the percussion colors painted on the skins of Bobby Previte's drums, clothed in the exquisite sighing of his cymbals, which also sizzle and crackle as they enrobe the music.
And then, as if to show that she is human after all, Jane Ira Bloom ends this magnificent album with sensuous, almost erotic brilliance as she pirouettes all alone on what must surely be the definitive version of "I Could Have Danced All Night."
Track Listing
Her Exacting Light; Life On Cloud 8; Ending Red Songs; Freud's Convertible; Airspace; Frontiers In Science; Rooftops Speak Dreams; Rookie; Adjusting To Midnight; Live Sports; Wingwalker; I Could Have Danced All Night.
Personnel
Jane Ira Bloom
saxophone, sopranoJane Ira Bloom: soprano saxophone, live electronics; Dawn Clement: Fender Rhodes; Mark Helias: bass; Bobby Previte: drums.
Album information
Title: Wingwalker | Year Released: 2011 | Record Label: Self Produced
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About Jane Ira Bloom
Instrument: Saxophone, soprano
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