The Club Montreal stage would play host to the Christine Jensen Sextet as they gave a short and sweet fifty-six-minute show titled “Modes of Coltrane.” Jensen, as one might expect given the name of the show, would skillfully perform arrangements of the prolific John Coltrane repertoire as well as lesser-known “deep cuts,” as she was fond of saying, including “Blue World,” “Equinox,” “Moment’s Notice,” and “Village Blues,” among others. She was well backed by some of the usual suspects of the Montreal jazz scene in the way of André Leroux, Lex French, Rémi-Jean Leblanc, Jim Doxas, and François Bourassa, with each of them having moments to shine throughout. Jensen herself pulled out various colours and harmonic ideas from her alto and soprano horns showing her familiarity with the language of Coltrane. Leroux, for his part, also channelled Coltrane well on his tenor (as he did on Échanges Synaptiques, which was reviewed here and whose rhythm section was nearly identical to Jensen’s on the night).
Jensen had impeccable timing, in the phrasing of her lines, but also when she would choose to play the tune “After the Rain;” the crowd’s umbrellas would open and close repeatedly throughout the first half of the show as the intensity of droplets varied, however, by the time Jensen and company had finished the tune, the rain had mostly stopped and “Village Blues” could close out the show.
Overall, the sextet performed aptly and injected a shot of old-school canonical jazz into this year’s programming, bringing us back to the genre’s roots.
Photo by Victor Diaz Lamich
