Home » Member Page
Jane Ira Bloom
Soprano saxophonist/composer Jane Ira Bloom has been steadfastly developing her unique voice on the soprano saxophone for over 40 years.
About Me
Winner of the 2023 Downbeat International Critics Poll and 2022 Jazz Journalists Association
Award for soprano saxophone. Featured in Vanity Fair August 2019 issue article Sisters of Swing
by Abigail
Jones; photography by Philip Montgomery.
Soaring, poetic, quick silver, spontaneous and instantly identifiable are words used to describe the
soprano sound of saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom. She's been steadfastly developing her singular voice on
the soprano saxophone for over 40 years creating a body of music that marks her as an American
original. She is a pioneer in the use of live electronics and movement in jazz, as well as the possessor
of one of the most gorgeous tones and hauntingly lyrical ballad conceptions of any soprano
saxophonist - Pulse. She is the winner of the 2018 Grammy Award for Best Surround Sound Album
for her trio album Early Americans.
Her continuing commitment to pushing the envelope in her music has led to collaborations with
such outstanding jazz artists as Kenny Wheeler, Charlie Haden, Ed Blackwell, Rufus Reid, Matt
Wilson, Bob Brookmeyer, Julian Priester, Jerry Granelli, Billy Hart, Mark Dresser, Bobby Previte, & Fred
Hersch. She's also spearheaded collaborative world music groups featuring world music virtuosi Min
Xioa-Fen on Chinese pipa, South Indian veena artist Geetha Ramanathan Bennett, koto artist Miya
Masaoka, Korean komungo player Jin Hi Kim, and bassist Mark Dresser. She has performed at such
diverse venues as Carnegie Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Museum of Modern Art, the Kennedy
Center, the United Nations, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the Smithsonian's Einstein
Planetarium, the Montreal, JVC, and San Francisco Jazz Festivals as well as regular club engagements
in NYC and tours of England, Portugal, Switzerland and Brazil with her group.
Winner of the 2022 Downbeat International Critics Poll for soprano saxophone, and multi-
time winner of the Jazz Journalists Award for soprano sax of the year, the Mary Lou Williams Women
In Jazz Award for lifetime service to jazz, the Charlie Parker Fellowship for Jazz Innovation and the
International Women in Jazz Jazz Masters Award. Bloom is the first musician ever commissioned by
the NASA Art Program and was honored to have an asteroid named in her honor by the International
Astronomical Union (asteroid 6083janeirabloom). She's garnered numerous awards for her creativity
including a Guggenheim Fellowship in music composition and a residency at the Baryshnikov Arts
Center. A new jazz festival in Brooklyn, NY featuring cutting edge woman artists was named in her
honor (The Bloom Festival).
A strong visual thinker and a cinematic stylist, Bloom's affinity for other art forms such as painting,
film, theatre and dance has both enriched her music and brought her into contact with other
innovative artists such as actors Vanessa Redgrave & Joanne Woodward, painter Dan Namingha,
comic Lewis Black, cartoonist Jules Feiffer, and legendary dancer/ choreographer Carmen
DeLavallade. She has composed for the American Composers Orchestra (NYC), the St. Luke's
Chamber Ensemble, the Pilobolus, Paradigm, & Philadanco Dance Companies, TV movie features
(Shadow of A Doubt/ NBC-TV), and film soundscores (John Sayles' Silver City) writing works for large
ensemble involving her signature movement techniques. She has also collaborated with classical
composers premiering new works for soprano saxophone (Sinfonia by Augusta Read Thomas). She
has curated a discussion/ performance series on improvisation at the Philoctetes Center for the Multi-
Disciplinary Study of Imagination in NYC, presenting a wide range of programs including
collaborations with dancer/ choreographer Carmen deLavallade and bassist Rufus Reid (Moving &
Playing: Jazz Improvisation & Dance), performances with pianist Fred Hersch and bassist Drew Gress
(The Art of the Ballad), and panel discussions with neuroscientist Josh McDermott and Arabic music
scholar Toufiq Ben Amor (Dancing on the Ceiling: Music and the Brain). Bloom is the recipient of three
awards in jazz composition from the Chamber Music America / Doris Duke New Jazz Works Program
for the creation of Chasing Paint, a series of compositions inspired by painter Jackson Pollock that
premiered at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Mental Weather, a suite of neuroscience inspired
pieces, Wild Lines: a jazz reimagining of Emily Dickinson's poetry that premiered at UMASS/ Amherst
in the poet's hometown, and Picturing the Invisible: a NYC Women’s Fund project inspired by the
groundbreaking science photography of Berenice Abbott. Her latest duet releases Some Kind of Tomorrow
and See Our Way featuring bassist Mark Helias appears on Bandcamp. Her digital release dueting with drummer
Allison Miller Tues Days also appears on Bandcamp. Picturing the Invisible: Focus 1 is a collection of duets with
koto artist Miya Masaoka, drummer Allison Miller, & bassist Mark Helias and is available in high definition immersive
audio.
The Philadelphia Music Project commissioned her premiere of Unexpected Light - a unique
collaboration of improvised sound & light with world-renowned lighting designer James F. Ingalls. JIB
has participated in several international and 'remote' events directed by bassist Mark Dresser and
composer Sarah Weaver including a large ensemble performance at the United Nations that linked
improvising musicians in Korea, China, New York, and San Diego. Bloom continues to find inspiration
in creating exploratory music with improvising musicians from around the world. She has recorded
and produced 20 albums of her music dating from 1977 to the present. In 1976 she founded her own
record label & publishing company (Outline Music) and later recorded for ENJA, CBS, Arabesque, Pure
Audio, and Artistshare Records. Bloom has been the subject of a number of media profiles; she has
been featured on CBS TV's Sunday Morning, Talkin' Jazz on NBC-TV, TIME Magazine's Women: The
Road Ahead special issue, in the publication Jazzwomen: Conversations w/ 21 Musicians, in the
Library of Congress Women Who Dare calendar, in Life Magazine's Living Jazz Legends, on NPR's
Morning Edition, Jazzset, Live From the Kennedy Center w/ Dr. Billy Taylor, and in the documentary
film Reed Royalty hosted by Branford Marsalis. She is a professor at the New School's College of the
Performing Arts School of Jazz in NYC, holds degrees from Yale University and Yale School of Music
and studied saxophone with woodwind virtuoso Joseph Viola. Nat Hentoff has called Bloom an artist
beyond category. Bill Milkowski has called her A true jazz original...a restlessly creative spirit, and a
modern day role model for any aspiring musician who dares to follow his or her own vision.