Jazz Articles about Christine Jensen

Christine Jensen: Looking Left

by Jason Crane
June 12, 2007

Christine Jensen: Look Left

by John Kelman
November 15, 2006

While Christine Jensen remains one of Canada's best kept secrets, she has garnered some international attention since emerging on the scene in the mid-1990s. Three of her compositions were featured on the highly regarded Vernal Fields (Enja, 1994), by her sister, trumpeter Ingrid Jensen, and she's had works for big band recorded and performed the world over. Still, outside Canada she remains a relatively unknown quantity in the grander scheme of things, something that Look Left deserves to rectify.

Jensen ...

Christine Jensen: A Shorter Distance

by Jerry D'Souza
December 8, 2002

Christine Jensen's maturity is in quick evidence on this album. Not only does she show great skills as a writer, but her arrangements fill her tunes with a pulsating body and show a keen mind for color and layered textures. She presents compositions for quintet, sextet and septet settings, giving each one character and fulfillment.

Jensen does not bow to the popular or the mundane in her writing. Each song is complex and crafted to bring out the ...

Christine Jensen: Collage

by Steve Armour
April 1, 2001

Christine Jensen starts Collage with a blues in fancy wrapping: a funky Rhodes ostinato, a displaced, sliding tonal center, and a stutter-step orchestration. This rich writing asks and gets the most from Jensen's musicians on this, her debut recording.

Drummer Karl Jannuska and pianist Brad Turner chat it up throughout the album. Their open phrasing on “Sweet Adelphi" and “Half Tide" lets the soloists breathe--lets them say something, then rest. Turner leads while Jannuska adds sweeteners and asides: an extra ...