Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Jane Ira Bloom: Chasing Paint

192

Jane Ira Bloom: Chasing Paint

By

View read count
Jane Ira Bloom: Chasing Paint
Chasing Paint opens with dreamy piano chords, over which Jane Ira Bloom applies gentle strokes of her buttery soprano tone, presumably an homage to one of Jackson Pollock’s more subtle drip paintings. Pollock, a jazz lover, famously listened to the stuff while working, though he liked the old style variety as opposed to the freely improvised music that would later become associated with his paintings.

Bloom has a lighter touch than one would at first associate with the bold hand of Pollock, but not all of the great painter’s canvasses were bombastic. Bloom gets it right, not mistaking the drip paintings for pure exercises in free improvisation. Though Pollock allowed a wide degree of accident, his work was also tightly controlled and thoroughly conceived. Thus, Chasing Paint is composed with an appropriate mixture of planning and masterly improvisation.

Pollock hit on an idea and, this established, only needed to perfect his technique and settle into steady production to realize a large number of these great products of modern art. With Fred Hersch on piano, the superb Mark Dresser on bass, Bobby Previte on drums, a nice book of tunes and the right idea, Bloom only needed the studio time and a decent engineer to turn out a first rate recording, which is just what Chasing Paint is.

Chasing Paint doesn’t clamor or crash much. Previte sounds slightly restrained, and Dresser plays it straighter than usual on several tunes, but this is just as the tunes require. Hersch’s piano work is solid, though as always a little too perfect for my taste. Still, the pieces catch fire at times, especially late in the game, and track seven, “Alchemy,” breaks free into more unfettered territory. The music on Chasing Paint is sensitive and subtly layered, sometimes contemplative, sometimes brightly active—just like an exhibit of Jackson Pollock’s art.

Visit Arabesque Recordings on the web.

Track Listing

1. Unexpected Light 2. Chasing Paint 3. The Sweetest Sounds 4. On Seeing JP 5. Many Wonders 6. Jackson Pollock 7. Alchemy 8. Reflections of the Big Dipper 9. White Light

Personnel

Jane Ira Bloom
saxophone, soprano

Jane Ira Bloom: soprano saxophone, live electronics; Fred Hersh: piano; Mark Dresser: bass; Bobby Previte: drums.

Album information

Title: Chasing Paint | Year Released: 2004 | Record Label: Arabesque Jazz

Tags

Comments


PREVIOUS / NEXT




Support All About Jazz

Get the Jazz Near You newsletter All About Jazz has been a pillar of jazz since 1995, championing it as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who make it. Our enduring commitment has made "AAJ" one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of fans, musicians and industry figures every month.

Go Ad Free!

To maintain our platform while developing new means to foster jazz discovery and connectivity, we need your help. You can become a sustaining member for as little as $20 and in return, we'll immediately hide those pesky ads plus provide access to future articles for a full year. This winning combination vastly improves your AAJ experience and allow us to vigorously build on the pioneering work we first started in 1995. So enjoy an ad-free AAJ experience and help us remain a positive beacon for jazz by making a donation today.

More

Tramonto
John Taylor
Ki
Natsuki Tamura / Satoko Fujii
Duality Pt: 02
Dom Franks' Strayhorn
The Sound of Raspberry
Tatsuya Yoshida / Martín Escalante

Popular

Old Home/New Home
The Brian Martin Big Band
My Ideal
Sam Dillon
Ecliptic
Shifa شفاء - Rachel Musson, Pat Thomas, Mark Sanders
Lado B Brazilian Project 2
Catina DeLuna & Otmaro Ruíz

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.

Install All About Jazz

iOS Instructions:

To install this app, follow these steps:

All About Jazz would like to send you notifications

Notifications include timely alerts to content of interest, such as articles, reviews, new features, and more. These can be configured in Settings.