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.”

Bloch was born in Moscow in 1962, lived in Israel, Germany and now in Brooklyn since 2005. She told me: “I often imagine myself flying towards a limitless light, flying and at the same time motionlessly losing myself in beholding it. Yes, it feels like my home, but I do not know in which land it is.

“I feel hopelessly homesick for this land which is nowhere. The last years of loneliness and isolation made me realise that this home is in my heart, this is the home that I left when I was born and where I will come back to when I die.”

Exile is a constant theme of her music and her sound is often anguished and forlorn in its lyricism, very different to a more conventional blues sound. It causes you to imagine people in small boats crossing the Channel or families on borderlands in Myanmar or Belarus.

“For me, my real sound began to emerge when I trained my body to breathe deeply like in sleeping, to send my full, warm and calm air into the mouthpiece and to form an ideal passage for this airstream with my mouth, tongue and throat. It might sound very technical but my inner being, my airstream and its character are like water of my soul. My air is who I really am beyond consciousness. So when I am able to send my true, calm air into my instrument, my real sound emerges.”

On Rose of Lifta her notes almost levitate, as in Darwish’s poem when his words describe Palestine: “This land is the skin on my bones/ And my heart/Flies above its grasses like a bee.” I asked her why she loved his poetry.

“I have three of Darwish’s books in English translation. I wish I could read Arabic, because when I listen to them in Arabic they sound so sonically and rhythmically beautiful.

“One of the qualities he writes about is human dignity, the inextinguishable flame of a free heart, the flame that is impossible to humiliate, to imprison, to subjugate. This inner dignity, this flame of heart inspires me to move forward, write and improvise.”

How does she find the US, the country where she has lived the longest? “I feel much freer here than in Europe because New York is so diverse. Personally, I always feel like a guest. I have no property or possessions that make me feel rooted here, like a family, apartment, land or car. But I am fortunate to have met a few musicians who changed my life.

“I studied with the great saxophonist Lee Konitz. Lee was my home in New York City together with my composition teacher Salvatore Macchia. Then I met drummer Billy Mintz, bassist Cameron Brown and later pianist Russ Lossing. We formed our ‘Feathery Quartet.’ These people are my home too. We are one body, one mind. We harmonise together on an interpersonal level because of who we are as people. Our soul chemistry is quite unique.”

So what are her Feathery confreres’ particular qualities? “Russ, Billy and Cameron are highly spiritual people who have thought a lot about our place in the universe and what the meaning of our being might be, how to lead a life of harmony, balance and kindness. They are foremost men of listening. They are also men of courage. No matter how risky the performing situation is — it could be bad acoustics, out-of-tune piano or uncomfortable stage placement.

“We have no arrangements and never rehearse, so our situation is like life itself with no pre-set circumstances. They take initiatives when needed, and they have an extraordinary ability — which is what I admire in them most — to take musical decisions and responsibility for where the music might be going. I have so much to learn from them.”

I asked her what inspired the title track, Rose of Lifta. She told me: “One day I read a prose poem about Lifta — a Palestinian village north-west of Jerusalem, constantly threatened by destruction by the Israeli government, written by our friend in Palestinian solidarity, Iran Annab. This is it:
‘When I return to Palestine, it will be like we were never expelled. I will go back/ to my mother’s house in the village of Lifta with Jerusalem in my backyard and/ that crazy climbing rose that scales all the floors. I will wear my great aunt’s liftawi/throwb that my mother wore before me. The children will climb the fig tree and/ there will always be lots of food on our table, enough to feed the neighbours/and the whole street too. The evenings will beckon in a jasmine breeze as the egg/yolk sun goes to sleep and the inky sky lights up with souls of all who exchanged/life for freedom. We will return.’

“The poem made me cry. It came straight into my heart and I identified with it completely. I could smell Jerusalem air again, see the figs again, feel how beautiful this land will be when zionism is there no more. I felt what injustice is on my skin, how it attempts to kill love, beauty, generosity, human spirit — but it fails to kill, humanness survives and climbs higher like this rose of Lifta. I sat down and wrote this piece within a couple of hours. It came as though by itself to me.”

Lena’s Rose of Lifta is one of the most meaningfully beautiful pieces of music you will ever hear. Begin 2022 by getting hold of it. But would she like to play it there, in person with the Feathery Quartet, in Lifta village itself?

“I don’t know if there are concerts organised in Lifta. I imagine an outdoor stage at night among the ancient buildings, with a good piano. We would feel magical performing like this, even if there were very few listeners, playing for friends, for the sky, for Lifta itself. Time would disappear. Our record is a miracle of dream fulfilment in music, and performing in Lifta would be another in real life. In free Lifta and free Palestine!”