Winnipeg Jazz Orchestra with Jill Townsend and Christine Jensen – Tidal Currents: East Meets West Album Release!

The Winnipeg Jazz Orchestra (WJO) is Canada’s first community-based, non-profit professional jazz orchestra. Founded in 1997 (registered as a charity in 2000), the WJO has matured to become an important part of Winnipeg’s cultural landscape, reflected in the ongoing support the organization receives from the Manitoba Arts Council, the Winnipeg Arts Council, the Winnipeg Foundation, and other sponsors. 

Tidal Currents: East Meets West – The WJO’s seventh release – features a commission between two of Canada’s most compelling writers for big band jazz: Jill Townsend and Christine Jensen. The music born of this meeting reflects on the places that meant the most to them, especially the bodies of water that surrounded them both in their youth up until the present. Townsend captures images and sounds of her east coast upbringing, unfolding into Jensen’s west coast childhood memories. 

The music moves into the waters surrounding them at present, including Townsend’s now west coast land and waterscape and Jensen’s explorations of her Montreal environs on the powerful St-Lawrence seaway. They have blended their compositions into one suite with the WJO: Tidal Currents, an East meets West Collaboration. Both composers are featured as guest artists, with Jill Townsend as conductor and Christine Jensen as soprano saxophone soloist. 

Presented by Jazz Winnipeg