By Ted Panken | Published January 2026
Ran Blake, the master auteur of film noir in notes and tones, offers the latest instantiation of his sui generis improvised dreamscapes on Night Harbor, thanks to one-time student Jared Sims, who plays baritone saxophone on this oddly apropos-to-the-moment suite of duos.
Recorded in a Boston-area recording studio and in Blake’s apartment on Sims’ laptop in 2023 and 2024, the imaginary soundtrack comprises 16 well-wrought vignettes of 20th century songs culled from various regions of Blake’s conscious and subconscious memory whose melodies Sims’ husky baritone voice renders and embellishes as a morphean stand-in for such world-class singers and Blake collaborators as Jeanne Lee, Dominique Eade, Sara Serpa, and Christine Correa. There are three takes of Ornette Coleman’s threnodial “Sadness” and two apiece of the Fritz Lang soundtrack “Dr. Mabuse” and the standards “Almost Like Being in Love” and “You Go to My Head.”
Apart from Lang and Coleman, the references include dream-world versions inspired by such long-time Blake inspirations as Abbey Lincoln (“Mendacity” and “Love Letters”), Chris Connor (“Driftwood”) and Stan Kenton (“Collaboration”). Quincy Jones’ “The Pawnbroker,” from the Sidney Lumet noir of that name, melts at the end to dream world, while Sims begins the only Blake original contained herein, “The Short Life Of Barbara Monk,” in a different key. Blake, nearing nonagenarian status when the recordings were made, surefootedly follows his dreams in conjuring the narrative flow, as he has done throughout his 65-year career as a recording artist.
