Composer-pianist Bruce Wolosoff describes the essence of his new album, Blue Mantra, as an engagement in multiple dialogues - between music and visual art, between the blues and chamber music, and between various moments in his creative life. The title track was inspired by a painting of the same name by his artist-wife Margaret Garrett. Similarly, Matisse Fantasies arose from seeing a charcoal drawing by the celebrated French impressionist. Blues for the New Millennium, commissioned by the Smithsonian Institution to commemorate the turn of the century, expresses a "before" and "after", and marked a turning point in Bruce's compositional style as he embraced a more directly lyrical, melodic compositional voice.

All three works are scored for clarinet, piano and varied strings, and revel in bluesy lyricism alongside Bruce's formidable pianism and the virtuosity of his collaborators: clarinettist Narek Arutyunian, violinists Deborah Buck and Michelle Ross, and cellist Clarice Jensen.