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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Lots to love about WJO, Jensen, Fournier
CHRISTINE Jensen brings out the best in a band.
The Montreal saxophonist and composer put the Winnipeg Jazz Orchestra to the test Sunday with her playing and music, and the big band made the grade through a variety of intricate big band charts, mainly written for Jensen's Juno Award-winning CD Treelines.
Jensen is a double threat, as a saxophonist and composer, and she delighted an audience with both Sunday afternoon at the Winnipeg Art Gallery in the first of two concerts. It was an afternoon of double threats as Winnipeg singer Lianne Fournier also joined the band to perform her own compositions.
The concert's declared theme, L'amour, toujours, l'amour, was given relatively short shrift with three songs related to Valentine's Day on Tuesday, but what it lacked in quantity was covered in quality. The WJO alone opened the concert with That Old Black Magic before Fournier joined it for a great version of They Can't Take That Away From Me that she arranged. Fournier's Aphrodite rounded out the romantic theme.
Fournier also sang her composition Educology, a bebop-influenced number she wrote while taking an education degree that explains the difficulty in teaching music to less-than-willing students.
In an engaging duet, Fournier played piano and sang the Joni Mitchell song Woman of Heart and Mind as Jensen accompanied her on soprano sax.
Jensen's compositions got the band members' blood boiling as she alternately conducted the 17 musicians through her tunes and performed solos on alto and soprano saxes.
A highlight was Dancing Sunlight, inspired by an Emily Carr painting of the same name that featured Jensen on soprano after some back and forth by tenor players Janice Finlay and Chuck McClelland. Seafever, written when Jensen spent six months in Paris, captured her thoughts of home on Vancouver Island, especially her soprano solo.
Treelines was also represented by Arbutus and Red Cedar, two tunes that came from her B.C. childhood living next to woods, and Vernal Suite, an expanded version of Vernal Fields that her New York-based trumpet-playing sister Ingrid initially recorded. Red Cedar featured a great solo by pianist Will Bonness and dual flugelhorn soloing by Richard Boughton and Richard Gillis.
The WJO also performed a spirited version of Skylark that was arranged by Bob Brookmeyer, the great trombonist, bandleader and composer who died in December.
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 13, 2012 $sourceSection0
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