Jazz Reviews : Bloom Buries Past, Moves Into New Realm of Sound

Jane Ira Bloom, the soprano saxophonist who came to town this week for a three-day spell at Catalina Bar and Grill in Hollywood (she closes tonight), has moved beyond the tentative modernisms of her earliest recordings, more than a decade ago, into an adventurous realm of spirited sounds on the brink of the avant-garde.

Appropriately, one of the most experimental works in her first show Tuesday was a movement from the suite of compositions she was commissioned to write for NASA after watching the Discovery launch. Here and elsewhere she made extensive use of the electronic effects that have piqued her imagination.

Electronic music on wind instruments is no novelty. Many of the ideas employed by Bloom, such as the octave divider, were popularized by Paul Horn on saxophone and flute more than 20 years ago. But Bloom’s wild slashes of sound--at one point in “Miro” she used a series of whole-tone-scale chords--seemed logical, and were well matched by her dance-like body movements.

The lack of a piano (included on most of her recent recordings) was a detriment. Her original works such as “Ice Dancing” and “Drums Like Dancing” were hampered by a backing of just bass (Kent McLagan) and drums (Tom Rainey). Both were efficient, but often--most notably in a chord-oriented song such as “Over the Rainbow”--the keyboard was conspicuous by its absence.

Bloom’s sound, when not subjected to the amplified effects, is clean and convincing, her phrasing impeccable. If she doesn’t always succeed in her attempts to break into new ground, at least she must be credited for trying to cross some potentially hazardous borders.