Ira Zepp

For saxophonists not familiar with Bloom's playing, this is an excellent release to do so with. The tunes are a mixture of originals and arranged standards and offer some great ensemble playing as well as solo work. Bloom has also procured a stellar group to create the music with as well, including Kenny Wheeler on trumpet and flugelhorn, Julian Priester on trombones, Bobby Previte on drums, Rufus Reid on bass, and Fred Hersch on piano. Bloom's soprano tone should be a benchmark for musicians wishing to hear what a well-played soprano saxophone sounds like. Not only is her "sound" superb, so are her incredibly well-chosen notes in solo passages. Bloom has an great amount of facility in all registers and blends this seemlessly with the arrangements around her.

An Opera Revival – Three Centuries Later. In 2016, almost three hundred years after the composition of Georg Caspar Schürmann's Die getreue Alceste, barockwerk hamburg presented a semi-scenic performance of this opera in the atrium of the Hamburg State and University Library. The abridged version on this CD contains the most important elements of the action as well as the musical highlights of the work. In his text the booklet author Jürgen Neubacher guides us through the action with a synopsis and explanatory inserts.

Jane Ira Bloom on soprano sax. Allison Miller on drums. Recorded remotely from each player’s home studios, because that’s 2021 for musicians. Five Tuesdays in March and April bore the following fruit…

The last of six LPs by the Red Rodney-Ira Sullivan Quintet was also the band's finest. There are times in the music (which consists of three originals by pianist Garry Dial, Herbie Hancock's "Speak Like a Child" and "As Time Goes By") where the group sounds like the early Ornette Coleman Quartet. The setting and advanced repertoire clearly challenged Rodney (who mostly sticks here to flugelhorn) and inspired Sullivan (switching between alto, alto flute, soprano and flugelhorn). A post-bop gem, one of Rodney's finest recordings.