Jamie Baum’s fifth recording with her incredible Septet+ ensemble sees the New York-based flute player and composer dipping her toes for the first time into the world of spoken word and art song. Seven of Baum’s 10 compositions here respond to works by eminent 20th and 21st-century female poets – Adrienne Rich, Marge Piercy, Tracy K. Smith, Lucille Clifton, and Naomi Shihab Nye.

A constellation of vocal luminaries joins Baum on this audacious sonic journey, with Theo Bleckmann, Sara Serpa, Aubrey Johnson, and Kokayi infusing each song with a unique timbral and emotional resonance.

The three instrumental pieces illustrate Baum’s remarkable ear for textural detail and her singular approach to the layering of material. Each begins with just a single musical line – an insistent, hammered out quarter note in the piano on ‘In The Light of Day’, a sorrowing trumpet line on ‘Dreams’, a double bass ostinato on ‘In The Light of Day’ – to which extra layers are added incrementally to create a glowing polyphonic web of sound.

Beautifully recited and sung by trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson and vocalist Aubrey Johnson respectively, Tracy K. Smith’s ‘An Old Story’ packs a hugely visceral punch in its portrayal of our imagined destruction (“The worst in us having taken over and broken the rest utterly down”). Inspired by Bertolt Brecht’s noted poem ‘To Those Born After’ written on the eve of World War II, Adrienne Rich’s 1995 poem ‘What Kinds of Times Are These’ receives a compelling treatment by Baum, with Sara Serpa’s plaintive vocal contrasting effectively with guitarist Brad Shepik’s punchy solo. Serpa also excels in Naomi Shihab Nye’s heartbreaking ‘My Grandmother in the Stars’ (“It is possible we will not meet again on earth. To think this fills my throat with dust.”); Adrienne Rich’s ‘In Those Years’ features a remarkable a cappella introduction from vocalist Theo Bleckmann, while Baum herself recites Marge Piercy’s paean to perseverance, ‘To Be Of Use’, strikingly coloured by piano and clarinet. Sitting right at the heart of the album, Kokayi’s performance of Lucille Clifton’s ‘sorrow song’ is one of the most powerful things you’ll hear this year.