Jessica Jensen Playboy's Busty Babes (repost)

Great album by the top Japanese jazz players of the time (Sadao Watanabe, Akira Miyazawa, Hideto Kanai, Takeshi Inomata, Eiichi Fuji…).

Great album by the top Japanese jazz players of the time (Sadao Watanabe, Akira Miyazawa, Hideto Kanai, Takeshi Inomata, Eiichi Fuji…).

The exceptional alto and soprano saxophonist from Canada releases the compelling Day Moon with her impressive quartet on Justin Time Records. The music is at turns, melancholic and ebullient, sober and playful. It’s a date where she creates an improvisational community of close friends in quartet and duo settings. “I got hit hard by the pandemic because I felt alone and was not doing what I’m supposed to do,” Jensen says. “So, I focused on my saxophones, teaching myself to present my sound, my solo voice. It’s almost like becoming the vocalist.”

Ingrid Jensen has the talent to make a dent in the world of jazz, and her hard-edged sound on trumpet hearkens to some of the past masters such as Woody Shaw, Freddie Hubbard, and Clifford Brown. Her excellent choice of a second horn, tenor saxophonist Gary Thomas (who doubles on flute), should have been enough to catapult this recording to the top of the pack, but somehow, the somewhat placid arrangements detract from the whole. Instead of the breakthrough album that might have been, Jensen has produced a good, if fairly pedestrian, recording, one that contains moments of inspired playing but somehow leaves the listener wanting more. Jensen knows how to build tension and release it at unexpected times, and her clipped phrases highlight an otherwise ordinary set.