Home » Jazz Articles » Live Review » Jane Ira Bloom Quartet Premieres "Chasing Paint" at The ...

4

Jane Ira Bloom Quartet Premieres "Chasing Paint" at The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston

By

View read count
Jane Ira Bloom Quartet
Museum of Fine Arts
Houston, TX
March 9, 2002

Jane Ira Bloom composed a suite in eight movements inspired by eight paintings of Jackson Pollock. She and her quartet gave the world premiere of the work in Houston at the prestigious Museum of Fine Arts. With Fred Hersch on piano, Mark Dresser on bass, and Bobby Previte on drums, the group awed a sedate crowd with the intricacy of the composition and with the dynamics of the interspersed improvisations. Da Camera of Houston, whose main efforts lean toward classical music, sponsored the concert. I speculated that not many in the packed venue were previously familiar with Bloom's work. To complement the performance, the museum hung Pollock's multi-colored "Number Six" at the rear of the stage. It was a fitting backdrop for the involved music. Titled Chasing Paint, the suite segued through up-tempo composed segments, exciting freeform explorations, and calming ballad-style musings. Bloom frequently displayed her swirling, shifting specialty where the soprano bell alternately moved from the left microphone to the right in dashing form, which was coincidentally associable to Pollock's painting approach.

While loose structure was a natural part of the lengthy 78-minute composition, Bloom encouraged the musicians to respond to images of each of the eight paintings as a gateway to openness and free expression. Dresser was the most aggressive in this mode. He robustly took his bass to strange, exotic places in creating a masterful group of solos. Previte was sensitive initially in adding accents to the movements, but he often exploded with a barrage of sound that made one think of the way color hit the canvas of a Pollack painting. Hersch was more reserved on this occasion, adding the semblance of stability to the piece rather than freelancing, although he had several occasions when he introspectively found the inner core of the songs.

Bloom was the focal point throughout the show. She was tender, passionate, energizing, and stimulating at various points, and she masterfully directed the band through the ever-changing nature of the suite. The varied tempo shifts kept the long performance in balance, but it was the continual reaching of Bloom for new highs on the straight horn that made the project gel. The artistry of the band in performing this serious work did justice to the artistry of Pollack. It was an engrossing event.

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.

Near

Houston Concerts

More

Jazz article: Downtown Tacoma Blues And Jazz Festival 2025
Jazz article: Bark Culture At Solar Myth
Jazz article: Hingetown Jazz Festival 2025

Popular

Read Take Five with Pianist Irving Flores
Read Jazz em Agosto 2025
Read Bob Schlesinger at Dazzle
Read SFJAZZ Spring Concerts
Read Sunday Best: A Netflix Documentary
Read Vivian Buczek at Ladies' Jazz Festival

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.