Concert review: Christine Jensen Jazz Orchestra ends tour with a bang

Ottawa Citizen | 29 June 2015 | by Peter Hum

Christine Jensen Jazz Orchestra
TD Ottawa International Jazz Festival
Laurier Avenue Music Stage
Sunday night

With good reason, a few bars of Auld Lang Syne casually rang out Sunday night after the concert of the Christine Jensen Jazz Orchestra finished on the Laurier Avenue Musical Stage. A few of the Montreal composer and bandleader’s musicians launched into the song to mark the final concert of their unprecedented tour that since mid-June had taken them to eight jazz festivals from Victoria to Ottawa.

Big bands being as expensive and unwieldy as they are, concerts — never mind tours — are relative rarities. Jensen said thanks to the Canada Council for the Arts’ support,  she had just logged more gigs in the previous two weeks with her 20-piece ensemble than in the last five years.

Naturally, the group went out with a bang before an appreciative crowd that packed the jazz festival tent.

While Jensen is best known for composing grand and stirring themes, she began her concert with a cover. Her band breathed new life into The Dry Cleaner From Des Moines, which the late bassist Charles Mingus wrote but which Joni Mitchell made her own on her 1979 album Mingus.

“We wanted to send some warm wishes to Joni,” said Jensen. She called Mitchell, whose health troubles were recently made public, the best musician to come out of Canada.

Into that opening, boisterous blues, Jensen had five soloists step into the limelight. First off were her band members who were also among her closest loved ones — tenor saxophonist Joel Miller, her husband, and her world-class trumpet-playing sister Ingrid, a New Yorker and the band’s featured artist. She received the lioness’s share of solo time during the night and always delivered spirited, ear-catching playing.

Four Jensen originals completed the too-brief concert.

Two were sunny paeans to Canadian natural beauty. Treelines allowed Ingrid Jensen and alto saxophonist Erik Hove to unfurl twisting, ear-catching melodies over slow, rangy swinging. During Western Yew, a tribute to the part of B.C. where the Jensen sisters are from, its composer picked up her soprano saxophone to chime in on its lilting, waltzing form.

At the concert’s emotional core was Jensen’s epic piece Nishiyuu, inspired by the young Cree who in early 2013 walked 1,600 kilometres from Northern Quebec to Ottawa. “A piece of hope,” Jensen called it. The recent findings of the Truth and Reconciliation of Canada had further fueled her optimism, she added.

The long, wending song relied on tenor saxophonist Andre Leroux to take listeners on a journey, and he did so tremendously, conveying patience, anguish and heroism with his playing.

To close, Jensen offered a new piece called Clin d’oeil that after its saloon piano opening demonstrated more soloing depths in the band, including trombonists Dave Grott and Jean-Nicolas Trottier and alto saxophonist Donny Kennedy. The song’s wailing finish featured Ingrid Jensen and lead trumpeter Jocelyn Couture trading supercharged phrases.

After many, many miles and many, many notes, all that remained was a profusion of hugs, Robbie Burns’ rhetorical questions and the band’s bus ride home.