KU Jazz Ensemble I with special guest Ingrid Jensen, trumpet
Directed by Dan Gailey
Thursday • April 2, 2026 • 7:30 pm
Main Auditorium
Ingrid Jensen has been hailed as one of the most gifted trumpeters of her generation. As a sought-out teacher, collaborator and soloist, it is easy to see why The New York Times calls her “as versatile as she is vigorous.”After graduating from Berklee College of Music in 1989, Jensen was offered a position at the prestigious Bruckner Conservatory in Linz, Austria. In the 1990s, she recorded three highly acclaimed CDs for the ENJA record label, becoming one of the most in-demand trumpet players on the global-jazz scene. Settling in New York City, she joined the innovative jazz orchestras of Maria Schneider (1994 to 2012) and Darcy James Argue (2002 to present). She has performed with a multigenerational cast of jazz legends, ranging from Clark Terry to Esperanza Spalding. Jensen has also performed alongside British R&B artist Corrine Bailey Rae on Saturday Night Live and recorded with Canadian-pop icon Sarah McLachlan. Jensen is prominently featured on the Grammy Award-winning Mosaic Project, led by drummer Terri-Lyne Carrington.
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A dedicated jazz educator, Jensen has resided on the jazz trumpet faculties at the University of Michigan, Peabody Conservatory and Manhattan School of Music. She also served on the jazz faculty, teaching composition and arranging, at Purchase College and the New School for Jazz in NYC. She performed and lectured as a guest artist with the Thelonious Monk Institute High School group featuring Herbie Hancock; and she also performed and taught regularly at the Centrum Jazz Workshop, the Brubeck Institute, the Banff Center for Jazz and Creative Music, the Stanford Jazz Camp, the Geri Allen Jazz Camp for Young Women and the Betty Carter Institute under the direction of Jason Moran. She is currently the dean and director of Jazz Arts at the prestigious Manhattan School of Music.She is an integral member of the highly acclaimed Blue Note recording-band Artemis and continues to write for and perform with her own projects both in New York and beyond. Jensen plays a custom Monette trumpet, built personally by the master builder Dave Monette.
Jensen will perform with the KU Jazz Ensemble I, led by Dan Gailey, director of Jazz Studies. Jazz Ensemble I is the flagship ensemble within the Jazz Studies program at the University of Kansas. The program has received 33 DownbeatStudent Music Awards, including Jazz Ensemble I’s 2023, 2021, 2019 and 2015 awards in the Graduate Division for Best College Big Band in the United States or Canada, and their Outstanding Performance Awards in the same division in 2024, 2022 and 2017. In April 2022, the band was one of 10 college jazz ensembles invited by Wynton Marsalis to compete in the Rudin Jazz Championship at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City, where they were selected as one of five finalists for the evening concert. The ensemble also performed at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City with internationally acclaimed vocalist Deborah Brown in 2016 and toured Europe with Brown in 2018, performing 10 shows in 13 days, including appearances at three of the world’s most prestigious jazz festivals: the Montreux Jazz Festival, Umbria Jazz and the Jazz À Vienne Festival. The band returned to Europe in July 2024, with performances at Umbria Jazz and multiple festival performances throughout Spain. KU Jazz Ensemble I has had the distinction of performing with such noted guest artists as Remy LeBoeuf, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Clark Terry, Camila Meza, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Anat Cohen, Sean Jones, Camille Thurman, Kneebody, Renee Rosnes, Michael Dease, Steve Wilson, Tia Fuller, Dave Douglas, Louie Bellson, Jeff Coffin, Tim Ries, Peter Erskine, Vince Mendoza, Conrad Herwig, Bob Sheppard, Gary Foster, Steve Houghton, Bob Mintzer, Bobby Shew, Carl Fontana, Dick Oatts, Frank Mantooth, Jon Hendricks, Pete Christlieb and many others.
