Jane Ira Bloom

Jane Ira Bloom, born January 12, 1955, in Boston, Massachusetts, is an American jazz soprano saxophonist, composer, and Broadway performer. The daughter of Joel and Evelyn Bloom, she began her musical training as a pianist and drummer before transitioning first to alto saxophone and ultimately to soprano saxophone as her principal instrument. She took up the saxophone at age 9 and studied with woodwind specialist Joseph Viola, who chaired the Woodwinds Department at Berklee College of Music, from 1968 to 1979. Bloom pursued her academic studies at Yale University, earning both a liberal arts degree and a master's degree in music in 1977. While still in New Haven, she established Outline Records, the independent label under which she would release numerous recordings throughout her career. After completing her studies, she relocated to New York City.

Bloom made her Broadway appearance in 1979 in The 1940's Radio Hour. That same decade she released her debut album as a leader, Second Wind, on Outline Records in 1980, beginning a prolific recording career that would span more than four decades and include releases on labels such as Enja, Columbia, Arabesque, and ArtistShare.

In 1989, Bloom became the first musician commissioned by the NASA Art Program, producing three original compositions for the project: Most Distant Galaxy, scored for soprano saxophone, live electronics, prepared tape, bass, drums, and electroacoustic percussion; Fire and Imagination, for soprano saxophone, improvisors, and chamber orchestra; and Beyond the Sky, for wind ensemble. The asteroid 6083 Janeirabloom was subsequently named in her honor.

Bloom received a Guggenheim Fellowship in music composition in 2007. Her 2013 album Sixteen Sunsets earned a Grammy nomination at the 56th Grammy Awards in the Best Surround Sound category, with sound engineer Jim Anderson. In 2015, Chamber Music America presented her with its New Jazz Works award for a composition inspired by the nineteenth-century American poet Emily Dickinson. The resulting work, Wild Lines, premiered in 2016. Bloom won the Grammy Award for Best Surround Sound at the 60th Annual Grammy Awards in 2017 for her album Early Americans.

Bloom holds a tenured professorship at The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York City's Greenwich Village. Her discography as a leader includes more than fifteen albums, among them Mighty Lights, Modern Drama, Chasing Paint, Wingwalker, and Picturing the Invisible: Focus 1, released in 2022. As a guest artist she has appeared on recordings by performers including Cleo Laine, Anthony Davis, Bobby Previte, and Sandra Boynton.