Trumpeter blows up a storm with high school all-star band

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This article was published 20/06/2002 (8541 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

With The Manitoba All-star High School Big Band

Jazz Winnipeg Festival

Prairie Theatre Exchange, June 18

Jazz/Chris Smith

IF I was a high school pianist named Scott Metcalfe, I would have been walking on air Tuesday night after Ingrid Jensen made a point of walking over and shaking my hand.

The River East Collegiate student had turned in some good soloing on the Kenny Wheeler composition Gentle Piece, which the New York-based trumpet player had admired throughout the performance, and she made the effort to let him know.

The entire band turned in a great performance backing the Vancouver-born Jensen at the Jazz Winnipeg Festival’s annual concert featuring bright young musicians onstage with a name from the jazz world.

And if you had any doubt Jensen was an ace, she proved you wrong Tuesday night as she heated up the PTE with fiery playing on trumpet and flugelhorn.

The hard bop trumpeter has three CDs under her own name and works in the Maria Schneider Jazz Orchestra, one of the top bands in jazz today.

Jensen can blow hard, like on the Wheeler piece — a favourite of big bands, and gently, like on Vernal Fields, a composition by her saxophonist sister Christine. With a Harmon mute in her trumpet, and the horn’s bell placed up to the microphone, Jensen’s gorgeous sound on Vernal Fields was reminiscent of Miles Davis, one of her influences.

It has almost become a cliche for the guest artist to say how wonderful the student musicians are, but Jensen was obviously pleased by their playing throughout the show. After one rehearsal of Gentle Piece with the band and director Ron Paley, she said: “These kids are great. I didn’t tell them I usually play that tune with ‘older bands’ of university students or (European) radio orchestras.”

“These cats behind me are the future audience and the future of jazz,” Jensen added.

The set with Jensen opened with Way Out Basie, a turn written by saxophonist Ernie Wilkins for the Count Basie band. Jensen opened with the number with her beautiful tone on muted trumpet before removing the mute and soaring with the open horn.

The Ellington band staple Caravan was an exhilarating version with Jensen using a plunger mute on her trumpet and sharing the front line with tenor saxophonist Zak Kingdon, a Silver Heights Collegiate student who acquitted himself very well on more than one occasion in the concert.

“I told you it’d be rousing,” Jensen said of Caravan. “Who’d have thought it would be that rousing?”

The evening opened with the junior high band, which kicked off its set with a blast on Switch in Time. They don’t quite have the polish that the older students have, but enthusiasm goes a long way with talent in a band like that.