As a jazzwoman, Christine Jensen, BMus’94, MMus’06, doesn’t like being boxed in. Well, there’s nothing more open-ended than infinity.
The Canadian saxophonist’s newest album is Infinitude and she’ll be performing its music in Montreal at the International Jazz Festival on June 30. Entirely fitting that the title is a tribute to boundlessness.
The non-jazzbo has a casual sense of how musicians of Jensen’s stripe create something evanescently new onstage as opposed to, you know, simply miming what’s on the record.
“And that’s interesting,” Jensen says, “because I do have a bit of a pop mentality in my writing. But there’s a freedom you get in jazz that does separate the two genres. We’re more about executing new ideas in the moment, as opposed to preparing everything.”
And given that jazz is elementally rooted in wordless communication and intuitive complicity, it makes perfect sense that a bond forged at the DNA level might prove advantageous.
Infinitude is a full-fledged collaboration between Jensen and her sister Ingrid, an acclaimed trumpeter who frequently works with multiple Grammy-winner Maria Schneider. While the two Jensens have often performed together, they’ve never worked this closely before in creating an album.
The influential jazz site All About Jazz calls Infinitude “the record for which fans of the Jensen sisters have long been waiting.” The sisters’ “two horns often purr and glide together with expressive anticipation,” says The Guardian.
“My best wish about playing when I get together with my sister – and I think she feels that same way – is kind of like we’re just hanging out and chatting and catching up on everything,” says Jensen. “It really does break down to this kindred bond of sisterhood. It’s just always been there.”
Is there a musical version of a sisterly spat?
“For sure,” she says, laughing. “Believe me, we can get into fights in the music. Like ‘Come on, catch up with me!’ or the other way around. Getting our headspace into the moment is so huge. That’s a big part of what we bring to the stage, I think.”
According to The Globe and Mail, Jensen is “one of Canada’s most compelling composers.” Her last two CDs, Treelines and Habitat, earned back-to-back Juno Awards for Best Contemporary Jazz Album in 2013 and 2014. Renowned for her combo-flexibility, Jensen has led quartets, quintets, sextets, and big bands.
“They [all] give me a different outlet for my creativity – to create not just music, but dialogue and communication with other musicians,” she says. “It’s hard to describe the difference in feeling. It’s much more intimate, I guess, in a quartet. With a large ensemble I don’t always have my horn on my face, which is what I really like to do.”
Jensen teaches at the Schulich School of Music, where she earned two degrees and where she learned there were broad strokes in a musician’s life beyond the notes.
“I was [there] in a very privileged time. There had been a lot of musicians who really stimulated my interest in getting better. Lots of great saxophone players who have remained my friends. I learned a bit about business, which has changed so drastically between then and now, especially with how we get our music out there. Donna Grantis [BMus’02] ended up being Prince’s guitar player. It’s a pretty strong wave of students who go through that program.”
At the Jazzfest, she’ll be playing with guitarist Ben Monder, the sonic savant on David Bowie’s final album Blackstar.
She gushes: “As jazz musicians, maybe the number one thing we work on is stretching our ears at a very rapid speed between intervals and sounds. And he, to me, is at the top of the world with that. He can do anything. You can play literally any note and he’s going to play some structure beneath it that just makes that note explode. That kind of feeling is very rare. David Bowie had very good taste.”
That Montreal concert will also offer jazz fans an opportunity to see the Jensen sisters in action together.“My sister and I, our conversation will end when one of us dies, basically. And even then, I think we’ll have left enough of a legacy for people to remember, through the sound we’ve made together. With Infinitude, it means our cycle will just keep going and going.”
