A jazz quartet based in Montreal is bringing its “chordless” jazz on a West Coast tour.
Nanaimo’s Christine Jensen will be back in B.C. starting this week for her “dream Island tour” with her Code Quartet and will play Simonholt on Nov. 8.
Code Quartet – which includes Jensen on saxophones, Lex French on trumpet, Adrian Vedady on acoustic bass and Jim Doxas on drums – met at McGill University and started out playing Montreal jazz clubs.
Jensen explained that in a chordless quartet, there’s no guitar or piano to provide harmonic support, resulting in more linear melodies with looseness and freedom.
“There’s a very different interaction that happens. There’s a lot of communication between all of us in terms of creating our musical statements…” she said. “We get to have a lot of fun. There’s a lot of language involved, a lot of freedom coming from a place where we’ve spent so much time on our own musicianship that now we get to really communicate with each other at a high level.”
The quartet plays original compositions, but is inspired by everything from church chorales to honouring “heroes” like Ornette Coleman, Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington. Code Quartet’s newer music is on the linear side, with very jazz-driven rhythms and cool structures, Jensen said.
Through playing and composing together, members of the quartet have developed a kind of code for what works for them.
“Yet we’re still bringing our own experiences to the group and that’s a different melting pot of ideas that comes out of the other side, and it comes from the code we’ve created in our experiences working together,” Jensen said.
She said the members of the quartet originally came togther with similar ideals about what they love about music and it was clear at their very first jazz club show that they had the makings of something special.
“Sometimes music is beautiful and hard, sometimes the music is beautiful and easy, and sometimes there’s a mix of less of one or the other,” she said. “In this case, we just had such a great time together going through the spirit of jazz history into our playing, which I think is really interesting. We all have a very deep connection to the past and where we’re coming from.”
Code Quartet’s album Genealogy is available through streaming services.
The Nanaimo show is Nov. 8 at 7:30 p.m. at Simonholt, 6582 Applecross Rd. Tickets are $35 or $20 for students, available from the restaurant, 250-933-3338, Fascinating Rhythm, Arbutus Music or online at http://quadwranglemusic.com.
The quartet will also be at Victoria’s Hermann’s Jazz Club on Nov. 5 and Qualicum Beach’s Old Schoolhouse Arts Centre on Nov. 6. For tickets and more information, visit http://codequartet.com.
editor@nanaimobulletin.com
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