Possessing one of the greatest voices on the soprano sax, Jane Ira Bloom does a tribute to the poetry of Emily Dickenson in an intriguing fashion. The two disc set has Ms. Dickenson’s poems set to music on one album with a team of Dawn Clement/p, Mark Helias/b and Bobby Previte/dr while the second disc has the same songs (for the most part) in the same order, but with Deborah Rush adding her voice to read the actual poems.
It’s a clever idea, and it works perfectly. On the musical side, Bloom percolates with the rhythm team on a grooving “Big Bill,” does a rich duet with Clement on “A Star Is Not Enough” and gets Monkish with the band on “One Note From One Bird.” The quartet gets frisky on “Cornets of Paradise” but for the most part there is rich lyricism as on “Emily and Her Atoms” while the album closes with a pastoral solo read of “It’s Easy To Remember.”
Rush’s voice is clear, literate and palpable, fitting right into the pieces such as “Alone & In A Circumstance” while sometimes waiting until the last minute to deliver the words. Most interesting is how the words fit well into the music, sounding like personal pages in a book. Easy to like on a multitude of levels.