“I’ve invested a lot of energy into creating a sound out of this instrument that I like”, Jane Ira Bloom observed in a recent interview with Downbeat. It’s a declaration any serious player might make, but may be an understatement in her case. The rich, lustrous, sound Bloom conjures from the often recalcitrant soprano saxophone is one of the wonders of contemporary music. She’s dedicated herself to the instrument and it remains at the centre of a lifetime musical endeavour that has given us a startling body of work, and her a clutch of awards, if not exactly worldwide fame.
So it’s a pleasure to find she has returned to the studio after a pandemic-induced spell of developing remote collaborations. Her new project offers fresh compositions inspired by her long enduring fascination with space and space technologies. The space inspiration is also carried over into the production, geared to offering an immersive experience in surround sound.
Which will not trouble this review, alas, as this listener lacks the necessary kit. In fact, I’ll mainly ignore the space connection, too. Aside from the titles, the (excellent) new music here sounds very much in line with other releases from the saxophonist.
In which light, what we have here is the welcome return of players featured, on two of Bloom’s finest, and best received, recordings. “Songs in Space” combines new work by the trio with her close long-term collaborators Mark Helias on bass and Bobby Previte on drums that gave us the sustained brilliance of Early Americans in 2016, and a duo with pianist Dominic Fallaco, last heard on with Bloom on the ballad-rich Sixteen Sunsets a few years earlier.
Of the four tracks with Fallaco, two are Bloom originals and two well-known. Better Starlight turns on a simple ascending theme played by both before they offer considered variations. Cry Without an Alphabet has the soprano taking a threnodic lead, with darkly chordal accompaniment. Bloom exhibits an unbeatably expressive ability to vary timbre from note to note without sacrificing purity of tone. The same is true of the duo’s reading of I Could Have Danced All Night, which is swooningly romantic, until a tiny note of sourness rows back from complete capitulation to the obvious mood.
The seven trio tracks are brisker, some offering a pleasingly direct follow on to Early Americans. These are brief – although space is, you know, spacious, Bloom here leans toward near miniatures, with a couple of tracks coming in under three minutes – but deviously catchy. And there are one or two freer excursions, on Polaris and Escape Velocity, that benefit from the more extempore approach developed by Bloom and Helias during the pandemic when they just wanted to play (there is already a fascinating digital album of such pieces from 2023, in which the trio reconvenes via Previte overdubbing drum parts on previously recorded duo excursions for soprano and bass). The clutch of new pieces here make this set a very welcome addition to the earlier album, my personal favourite from her discography
And the sound? Well, surround sound aside, and hoping WAV files heard on decent headphones can do some justice to the work here, I can say that everything is beautifully recorded. The sustain on Helias’s plucked bass rings out, the lightest of cymbal washes, or mallet caress of drum head come across with the immediacy of a trap set in your listening room. And Bloom’s soprano sound, long one of the richest and most readily identifiable personal signatures on any instrument, is captured in all its glory.
A consolidation, rather than a departure, then, but a consolidation of a superbly accomplished career. Bloom has just turned seventy, so we may hope for more from this peerless practitioner, but this one makes a well-burnished addition to her oeuvre for now.
Release date is today, 26 June 2025
