*****(5 stars) It’s past time that Baum was elevated from the “other instruments” ranks and recognized as an important composer/leader. It’s a great album, and for its various linked messages alone, an important album.

- Brian Morton, DOWNBEAT, May 2024

****(4 stars) “Editor’s Choice”...with her incredible Septet+ ensemble...on this audacious sonic journey...the instrumental pieces illustrate Baum’s remarkable ear for textural detail and her singular approach to the layering of material..one of the most powerful things you’ll hear this year. - Peter Quinn, Jazzwise (UK), June 2024

What Times Are These - a gorgeous new album by flutist and composer Jamie Baum,...Baum explains how the disquiet and stillness of lockdown drove her headlong into composing...Whatever it took to get her there, we should feel fortunate, because these compositions, for the mid-size chamber ensemble known as her Septet+, feel illuminated from within. - Nate Chinen - Take Five - The Gig, April 2024

...creative music is best when it dares to reach across boundaries of all kinds — but it only works when the artist has a strong vision that allows multiple strands to be woven into a beautifully conceived tapestry. Baum has done that to thrilling effect - it is her best recording... it is a revelation. - Will Layman, PopMatters, June 2024

At the peak of her artistry, flutist and composer Jamie Baum delivers her new album, What Times Are These. Indeed, art is at the forefront here, on every level....If, for you, the beauty of a musical work merits the same contemplation as a visual artwork, then and only then will this album appear as “Indispensable,” as it did for us. - Thierry De Clemensat - Paris-Move, April 2024

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The Jamie Baum Septet was formed in ’99 and has been Baum’s compositional muse ever since.

NYC jazz flutist/composer, Sunnyside Records artist and 2014 Guggenheim Fellow, Jamie Baum, released her 7th album, What Times Are These with The Jamie Baum Septet+ (April, 2024). Internationally recognized and listed in DownBeat Critics Polls annually since ’99, she’s toured in 35 countries and worked/recorded with several renown and diverse jazz artists ranging from Randy Brecker, Donald Brown, Mick Goodrick, Roy Hargrove, Tom Harrell and John Abercrombie to Dave Douglas, Louis Cole, Anthony Braxton, Wadada Leo Smith.

Her compositional muse, The Jamie Baum Septet+ was formed in 1999, and has since produced five highly acclaimed CDs and countless performances at iconic venues and festivals worldwide. Receiving standing ovations at packed venues has become the norm for this band, creating excitement and a kaleidoscope of colors with their unusual instrumentation and NYC-style “take no prisoners” energy!

Exploring and successfully incorporating influences from modern Western-classical composers - to rock and South Asian music, while expanding their sound along the way, the Septet+ was nominated by the Jazz Journalists Association as 2014’s “Best Midsize Ensemble of the Year” – in the same list with only two other bands, The Wayne Shorter Quartet and Steve Coleman’s Five Elements!” In fact Richard Ginell of the Journal of Music Critics Association at the Monterey Jazz Festival 2018, wrote “It was the most extraordinary music of the festival…"

Baum’s recently-released What Times Are These has received unparalleled, international acclaim including the highly-coveted-yet-infrequently-bestowed five-star review in the “jazz bible,” DownBeat Jazz Magazine. It also made several “Best of 2024” lists including DownBeat, JazzTImes (inaugural relaunch issue), The Boston Globe, AAJ, AAJ (Italy), PopMatters, The 19th Annual Francis Davis Jazz Poll, etc.

For this project Baum composed stunning music highlighting the words of renown women poets including Adrienne Rich, Marge Piercy, Lucille Clifton, Naomi Shihab Nye and Tracy K. Smith, reflecting our collective experience of Covid-19 and current socio/political climate. Added to her stellar band are the exciting stylings of powerful vocalist Sarah Elizabeth Charles.