Award: Research & Development Grant
Discipline: Performing Arts
Project Collaborator(s): Mary Petrich, Composer and workshop co-director
City/Town: Mesa
Year: 2019
Artist Website: https://claudiabloompianist.com/
Jazz requires a lifestyle of dedication and practice. We first learn a new language, and then spend a lifetime developing our own voice. By doing this research and performing the results of our research, we will reach deeper into ourselves, gaining skills, gaining confidence, gaining compassion, encouraging others to do the same.
excerpt from Claudia Bloom’s R&D Grant application
Professional jazz pianist Claudia Bloom will work with saxophonist/composer/educator Mary Petrich to explore new techniques for composing, arranging, and performing their own music as well as the music of other contemporary women in jazz. Their goal is to use music to build community and connectivity, inclusion and equality.
Bloom’s proposal builds upon research and concerts she has done during the past several years. With this grant she will continue to arrange challenging works by women jazz composers while also experimenting with group composition, free music, and creative structures for developing improvisational pieces.
“By doing this research and performing the results of our research, we will reach deeper into ourselves, gaining skills, gaining confidence, gaining compassion, encouraging others to do the same,” said Bloom in her application. “In reaching out to the female jazz community of practice, we will be building that community and many more individual voices along with our own.”
Work Samples
Claudia Bloom is a classically trained pianist that made the switch to jazz shortly after receiving a degree in piano pedagogy. A veteran of live performances of mixed musical styles over the years in the Denver and Phoenix areas, she also experienced the thrills and chills of travel working on a cruise ship, several DOD tours, hotels and resorts. After years of working behind vocalists in all these venues she decided to never look back and create concerts where musicians could thrive and learn new music. This idea soon morphed into arranging and performing, and therefore supporting, the many women jazz musicians who compose and perform this music but never reach the name recognition of many men.
Bloom always wanted to change songs to make them personally meaningful, and started arranging early on. A Beatles tune might become a reggae tune! Never wanting to go the normal way led her into looking at women in jazz performances as a way to not only honor the women who play, but create concerts that were thought provoking and meaningful.
Work Samples
Banner image: Photo of Claudia Bloom, by Carrie Motzing
