Ingrid Jensen is now using custom designed PRANA trumpet and flugelhorn mouthpieces! We have worked with countless clients over the years who know Ingrid Jensen well - and everyone we have met who knows her says the same thing about her: "She is so talented and works so hard and is so dedicated to her art and craft… and on top of that, she is just a lovely, beautiful human being!" This winter we got to experience this first hand with her guest appearance at Portland’s Jimmy Maks Jazz Club and her first visit to our shop.
Ingrid came to us having played the same trumpet mouthpiece for decades - a relatively small mouthpiece that was about 50 years old and very, very tired! After making up probably too many prototypes for her that were similar in rim and cup design to the mouthpiece she was used to, we finally had her try a new PRANA mouthpiece with a wider rim diameter and an all new "SLAP" cup. She instantly took to it like a duck to water (this is Oregon you know…) and hasn’t looked back since.
Before she had to catch a plane the last day of her visit, we quickly jumped on the computer and laid out an all-new, matching flugelhorn mouthpiece. Some Indian food helped prepare Ingrid for the red eye back to New York, and Mouthpiece maker John Kim stayed late, cutting Ingrid's new flugel mouthpiece in between scarfing forkfuls of malai kofta and black dal. This is the way to make new mouthpieces!
A few days after her visit, she left on a European tour with her new mouthpieces in hand. It was mouthpiece initiation by fire. This woman is apparently fearless!
"I was playing stuff on the tour I never would have imagined playing. It just came out from an inspired place, and I was playing the music way better than I could have played it before"
Thanks to Ingrid for having faith in our work and for "jumping off the cliff" just a couple days before a European tour! Watch for a possible all-new model of Monette PRANA trumpet later this year that may have left-handed players such as Ingrid and some collectors very interested…
You can listen audio clips, watch video clips and purchase Ingrid’s CD’s at her ArtistShare website: www.ingridjensen.com
SPECIAL NOTE: Ingrid will be a featured artist for the second year in a row at this year’s ITG conference in Banff, Canada June 1-5. For more information, including a review of her concert and presentation, visit: www.trumpetguild.org
See and hear Ingrid on her new mouthpieces on YouTube from April 2008: