Chasing Paint

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[4]
The Buffalo News	[5]
Penguin Guide to Jazz	[6]
Tom Hull	A−[7]
The Penguin Guide to Jazz	[8]

The AllMusic review by David Dupont said "With Chasing Paint, Jane Ira Bloom offers a follow-up to her well-received Red Quartets session of 1999. Returning with the same cast, Bloom offers a sound portrait of abstract expressionist painter Jackson Pollock. True to her own muse, Bloom's portrait, while abstract, is impressionistic rather than expressionistic. ... With Chasing Paint, Bloom creates a series of complementary pieces that have the coherence and sweep of an extended work".^[4] Jeff Simon of The Buffalo News added, "...And if Pollock could come back to life one night and hear Bloom play "The Sweetest Sounds" for him, I think his furious, questing heart would melt."^[5]

On All About Jazz, Franz A. Matzner stated "Jane Ira Bloom's experimental homage Chasing Paint was both immediately fascinating and disturbing ... what Bloom has attempted is a translation into sound of Pollack's [sic] transmutation of sound into color and movement. The result is a series of dense, explorative compositions, the faultless execution of which delineates the thoroughly progressive and acutely perspicacious nature of Bloom’s writing",^[9]

In JazzTimes, Nate Chinen wrote "the album conveys a meticulous air even as it heeds jazz’s freer impulses. Bloom’s soprano saxophone is characteristically fleet and full-toned, capturing all the angular caprice of a brush on canvas ... At times, Bloom’s trademark electronic effects manage to evoke a drip painting’s network of color and line. Yet even at its most elliptical, this album remains wholly approachable. Like a Pollock canvas, it needn’t be explained to be understood".^[10]

All compositions by Jane Ira Bloom except where noted

1. "Unexpected Light" – 8:34
2. "Chasing Paint" – 7:12
3. "The Sweetest Sounds" (Richard Rodgers) – 3:24
4. "On Seeing JP" – 4:54
5. "Many Wonders" – 6:39
6. "Jackson Pollock" – 2:54
7. "Alchemy" – 8:24
8. "Reflections of the Big Dipper" – 4:09
9. "White Light" – 4:28

• Jane Ira Bloom – soprano saxophone, live electronics
• Fred Hersch – piano
• Mark Dresser – bass
• Bobby Previte – drums