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Jazz Jensen-Style

Ingrid Jensen.
Angela Jimenez
/
Courtesy of the artist
Ingrid Jensen.

Jazz trumpeter Ingrid Jensen has always been fighting stereotypes. "When you look like I look — a blond, white chick from Canada — you're not supposed to sound the way I sound," she once said, at a Women in Jazz conference in San Francisco. The musician, who also plays flugelhorn, recently talked with host Liane Hansen about her career and music.

Jensen was born in 1967 in Vancouver and raised in the small town of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island. She was encouraged to study music by her mother, a pianist and school teacher. By the time Jensen graduated from high school, she had been admitted to Boston's prestigious Berklee College of Music on a scholarship.

Since graduating from Berklee in 1989, Jensen's career has been on a steady rise. Several times a nominee for Juno Awards (Canada's Grammys), she has performed and recorded with the Maria Schneider Orchestra, Jeff "Tain" Watts, Gary Bartz and legendary bop trumpeter Clark Terry, among many others.

Jensen's latest CD is 2003's Now As Then, recorded under the moniker Project O with drummer Jon Wikan and organist Gary Versace.

Jensen is currently on faculty at the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore. She continues to travel and perform extensively, conducting clinics and workshops as well as playing with her own groups and appearing as a guest with a variety of ensembles from around the world.

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