Tinnitist | 28 June 2023 | by Darryl Sterdan
Christine Jensen rises to the occasion with her new album Day Moon — showcasing today on Tinnitist.
Photo by G. Scott McLeod
We’ve witnessed and heard testimonies from countless musicians who were forced to struggle — financially and artistically — through the lockdowns of the pandemic. For some who have survived, there’s been the silver lining of a shift in perspective. Many artists dug deep in isolation and discovered the solution to long-elusive mysteries. Some let go of the tried-and-true and instead explored new means of expression.
While we’re hopefully emerging from the final Covid surge, it’s a welcome that an artist like Christine Jensen is opening ears to the magic of reflection on her long, turbulent days and months locked down.
The exceptional alto and soprano saxophonist from Canada has released the compelling Day Moon with her impressive quartet on Justin Time Records. The music is at turns, melancholic and ebullient, sober and playful. It’s a date where she creates an improvisational community of close friends in quartet and duo settings. “I got hit hard by the pandemic because I felt alone and was not doing what I’m supposed to do,” Jensen says. “So, I focused on my saxophones, teaching myself to present my sound, my solo voice. It’s almost like becoming the vocalist.”
At home leading her own renowned jazz orchestra, Jensen was forced to pull back by necessity into a more intimate space. “I had to shed the extra instrumentation that was always in my head,” she says. “So, I started to once a week play music with my longtime piano friend Steve Amirault. We worked together — he collaborated with me and pushed the boundaries. It created a stable place for me.”
Jensen invited her regular rhythm team of bassist Adrian Vedady and drummer Jim Doxas to mask workshop in small spaces to bring new colors into the ebb and flow of her compositions. The quartet members became, as she writes in her liner notes “my refuge and sanctuary.” She continues, “I feel like we met on thin ice through two cycles of seasons, meeting, greeting, and expanding on this repertoire, so that we could find a place that allowed us to trust and support each other at the highest level — not just in the music, but also in friendship, empathy and love, all words that the lockdown was attempting to repress.”
The album opens with the title tune that was written pre-pandemic for her chordless collective CODE Quartet that included trumpeter Lex French. The ’60s Ornette Coleman-inspired band issued its Genealogy album for Justin Time in 2021. “It started out as a demo that ended up being the recording,” Jensen says. “At that point, the tune was just starting to jell, but I never glued to it. So, I thought let’s explore it wider harmonically with the piano instead of trumpet. The changes led to a surprising end.”
It’s the perfect lead tune inspired by a vision Jensen experienced. She was on her street in the middle of the day and saw a perfect moon in front of her with the sun glowing behind. “It was so strange,” she says. “It’s how the pandemic felt — living in another world. Other worldly and so sci-fi. It makes for a perfect prelude to the rest of the album where the world is shifting.”
Christine Jensen has been described by jazz writer Mark Miller of The Globe and Mail as “one of the most important Canadian composers of her generation.” Jensen grew up in Nanaimo, British Columbia with the likes of tenor saxophonist Phil Dwyer and pianist & vocalist Diana Krall but is now based in Montreal, Quebec. She originally went to that city to attend McGill University from which she received her first degree in jazz performance in 1994 and, subsequently, a Masters Degree in that same discipline in 2006. Over the intervening years, as her career developed, she has collaborated with such talented individuals as pianist Geoffrey Keezer, saxophonist Donny McCaslin and her sister, the New York-based trumpeter Ingrid Jensen.
