JAZZ and poetry have always been comrades of culture. Remember Charles Mingus’s collaborations with Langston Hughes, Mike Westbrook’s versions of Blake or Evan Parker’s evocations of William Morris on his solo album Winn’s Win.

But the momentous beauty of tenor saxophonist Lena Bloch’s album Rose of Lifta and its kinship with the Palestinian laureate Mahmoud Darwish creates a sound both unique and an expression of what Darwish called “the music of human flesh.”