Day Moon contains a series of compositions by the acclaimed Canadian saxophonist Christine Jensen that reflect her state of mind during the pandemic years. There’s nothing on the recording that represents the isolation experienced during those days by many people quite like Jensen’s lonesome soprano sax on the Shorter-ish ballad ‘Lined’, which mixes ‘Spanish’ modal and contemporary free bop with an eerily penetrating ambience that sets the tone for the rest of the album.

It’s the opener to the excellent ‘Quiescence Suite’ which she was recently commissioned to write by New York’s Jazz Coalition. This is followed by the hard bop-ish ‘Twenty Twenty Blues’ in which her sax slips and slides sleazily between western tones and ‘Tolos d’Abril’, with its breezy Brazilian vamp masking a noir-ish interior. Jensen’s reedy soprano sound, which is easier on the ears than most, on the more upbeat ‘Etude de Mars’ concludes a suite of well-crafted, memorable themes from a discerningly mature composer who’s delivered the goods pretty consistently since the 1990s. It also picks up on contrasting aspects of Jensen’s oeuvre. Paring down to a duo with pianist Steve Amirault (a long-time colleague since the 1990s), on alto sax she gives an elegiac reading of the standard ‘Here’s That Rainy Day’ while ‘Like in Love’ finds a more cool-school route. Committed and heartfelt performances all round, especially from Jensen who sounds reinvigorated as both improviser and composer following tough times.