Close-Up Music: The Jane Ira Bloom Quartet and the Intimacy of Ideas (November 21, 2009)
Music Performance & Discussion
Participants: Jane Ira Bloom, Dawn Clement, Mark Helias, Matt Wilson
Experiencing a live jazz quartet in close quarters can be thrilling and mysterious. Jazz musicians have long known that music can take on deeper dimensions when performed by a band that has improvised together for a long time. Improvisers command and express fiercely individual vocabularies at the same time as they communicate with one another in a language based on shared personal and musical ideas. How do musicians shift from internal song to group synchrony when they are composing together in the moment? What can be communicated in a quartet setting that is different from larger or smaller ensembles? What musical ideas are "visible" to musicians' consciousness, and what are "invisible?" Saxophonist/composer Jane Ira Bloom and her long-time collaborators, pianist Dawn Clement, bassist Mark Helias, and drummer Matt Wilson, will perform and talk about their experiences in close-up music.
