Regina Jazz Orchestra Featuring Christine Jensen
Join the Regina Jazz Orchestra for a special night, featuring Juno Award-winning composer, bandleader and saxophonist Christine Jensen. Known for her strong lyricism and brilliant compositions, audiences will have a unique chance to see one of Canada’s top musicians performing her compositions with R.J.O.
About Christine Jensen:
The Canadian Saxophonist and composer has led a distinct voice to the creative jazz scene for the last twenty-five years with her large and small ensembles. She released her 3rd jazz orchestra album Harbour in 2024. This album captures over a decade of her compositions and commissions.
“Always a compelling writer, capable of strong lyricism combined with harmonic invention and plenty of narrative twists and turns, Jensen’s music not only impresses on a first encounter, but reveals more with each and every listen.” – All About Jazz
As a Downbeat Critic’s Poll winner for Rising Star Big Band, Arranger, and Soprano Saxophonist, she is constantly in motion as an improviser, composer and bandleader. Her jazz orchestra recordings have gone on to win Juno awards, including Habitat (2014) and Treelines (2011). She was nominated for a 2024 Juno for her pandemic-inspired quartet album Day Moon (2023). She has been honored as a two-time recipient of SOCAN’s Hagood Hardy Jazz Composer Award. Habitat received the coveted 5 stars in Downbeat, along with Jazz Album of the Year. In 2017, Jensen was awarded The Prix Oscar Peterson from the Montreal International Jazz Festival for her exceptional contributions to jazz in Canada.
Jensen’s music has taken her all over the world through commissioning, performance and conducting opportunities. In 2023 she was honored to conduct and arrange for the HR Big band-Frankfurt with Mark Turner and his music. The Winnipeg Jazz Orchestra released the suite East Meets West in 2024, where Jensen was commissioned to compose as well as being featured on saxophone, along with Vancouver composer and conductor Jill Townsend. Over the past decade she has been an invited guest artist with Frost School of Music, The New School, University of Michigan, UMO Jazz Orchestra-Finland, Stockholm Jazz Orchestra, and Luxembourg Jazz Orchestra.
Jensen has performed with Jeremy Pelt, Phil Dwyer, Ben Monder, Gary Smuylan, Geoffrey Keezer, Lenny Pickett, and Donny McCaslin, Helen Sung, as well as directing Terrence Blanchard with the Orchestre National Jazz de Montreal. She is founding artistic director and conductor of the Canadian National Jazz Orchestra, as well as the past artistic director of Orchestre National Jazz de Montreal (ONJ), who commissioned and recorded her suite Under The Influence (2017) as well as her ever evolving project equal=orchestra (2022).
In 2022 Jensen joined the Eastman faculty as professor of jazz studies, where she teaches jazz composition and arranging, along with directing the award-winning Eastman Jazz Ensemble. She continues to work between Montreal and New York, where she has previously been on faculty at McGill University, Purchase College (NY), University of Sherbrooke, Université de Montreal. Teachers and mentors include Kenny Werner, Jim McNeely, Dick Oatts, Remi Bolduc and John Hollenbeck.
