Clarice Jensen

Clarice Jensen employs an avant-garde approach to the cello that has mesmerized listeners and led to collaborations with artists including Jóhann Jóhannsson, Max Richter, Beck, and Joanna Newsom. As artistic director of the American Contemporary Music Ensemble she has also issued her own recordings, notably the 2020 album The experience of repetition as death along with Esthesis in 2022.

Residing in New York, Jensen completed her studies at the Juilliard School, where she trained with cellists Harvey Shapiro and Joel Krosnick. By routing her instrument through guitar pedals and electronics she developed a distinctive voice that attracted attention from musicians such as Jónsi, Mono, and Dustin O'Halloran. Her contributions appeared on numerous recordings during the 2010s, yet her own debut arrived in 2018 with the four-track For This from That Will Be Filled, issued by Berlin label Miasmah and featuring a track co-written with Jóhann Jóhannsson. This set distinguished her within the experimental drone and neo-classical fields. The EP Drone Studies followed in 2019, after which she signed to 130701, an imprint of Fat Cat Records. Although captured in 2018, her first release for the label, The experience of repetition as death, emerged in late 2019; the intimate work, composed amid her mother's battle with leukemia, received acclaim for its immersive textures. Beyond solo projects she scored the films Sin Señas Particulares in 2020 and No Man of God in 2021, worked alongside Max Richter and Balmorhea, and continued directing the American Contemporary Music Ensemble. Her third album, Esthesis, came out in late 2022. Drawing partly from chromesthesia, whereby sounds trigger perceptions of color, movement, and form, the record incorporated synths, piano, and vocals into her established palette of cello and electronics.