Of all the inheritors of the pensive and diffidently romantic jazz-trumpet sound of the late Kenny Wheeler, his Canadian compatriot Ingrid Jensen comes closer than most to being a kindred spirit. Jensen often suggests Wheeler’s quiet flightiness – often expressed in a startled squeal leaping out of a preoccupied trance, like an introvert suddenly driven to share an entrancing or alarming vision. She wound up a rare UK tour on Sunday as the improvising soloist fronting composer/saxist Phil Meadows’ acclaimed young jazz/classical crossover project, the Engines Orchestra.
Jensen played a first set with her touring quartet, and though there were some tentative early adjustments to her subtle long-tone harmonies, guitarist Jez Franks’s fluent empathy began to grow with every Jensen original, and in turning Kenny Wheeler’s usually airy Old Time into a contemporary hustle full of Bitches Brew-era wah-wah sounds, she paid tribute both to her biggest inspiration and her own independence.
In the second half, the Engines Orchestra shadowed the leader’s sparingly reverb-aided ruminations on her saxist sister Christine’s atmospheric Swirl Around, and Phil Meadows’ Twice the Man swelled from a folksong lilt over a hovering strings drone to a Jensen solo of mercurial variety, and a Latin-fuelled tenor-sax blast from Riley Stone Lonergan. Kenny Wheeler’s Foxtrot, and a Jensen evocation of an Alaskan sea-voyage (complete with timber creaks and seabird cries) wound up a highly original jazz show shaped by strong personalities, but in absorbingly understated ways.
