Jayna Nelson “Bloom of Creation”
(2009, Sunjump Records)
He didn’t know it at the time, but pianist and label owner John Esposito was giving something precious to Woodstock resident and flutist/piccolo player Jayna Nelson: “He was giving me a gift.” What was to become Bloom of Creation was a live performance recorded in 1999 on a DAT tape. After being missing for a decade, Esposito found it and decided to release it on his Sunjump Records. The creative fire of Bloom of Creation came from the embers of Esposito’s A Book of Five Rings. Half of the players of that album—Nelson, Esposito, trumpeter Matt Schulman, and drummer Peter O’Brien—gigged together for a spell and then, with the addition of bassist Francois Moutin, bore Bloom of Creation at the now defunct Alterknit venue of New York’s Knitting Factory.
“Fact: Re-Blues” is a free-kinda-blue tour de force exemplifying the band’s ensemble-ness with the members stretching into each other’s musical space without creating a crowded sound. The coffee-table piece is “Tim’s Brain,” which assigns players to either half of the human brain to musically interpret its emotional and thinking processing. This is Nelson’s bailiwick: She’s an Interactive Metronome provider who assists in training the brain to “process information more effectively.” Her other focus is her playing that possesses a balanced logic and earthiness (“Indah Dreams,” “Star Seed,” “Junk DNA Dance”) and intricately weaves her sound into the fabric of a composition (“Agar”). With the Bloom of Creation, Nelson has landscaped an organic milieu that is openly defined. www.sunjumprecords.com.
This article appears in June 2010.
