Clarice Jensen, composer and cellist

Photo by Steph Larsen

“Jensen’s layered loops express the range of emotions that arise as death draws near, from the simple beauty of bookends ‘Daily’ and ‘Final’ to the humble awe of ‘Holy Mother.’ This collection of requiems for a dying mother ranks among the great ambient albums of the 21st century.”
— NPR, 50 Best Albums of 2020
“Meditative or disorienting? Turns out they’re one in the same here. That might not be such a bad thing, especially if Jensen’s new album shifts us out of our daily routines and into spaces unlike any we know.”
— NPR

Heralded by NPR as “perhaps the most restless and fascinating cellist working today,” Clarice Jensen has established a unique presence in contemporary music as a multi-faceted solo artist performing and recording her own original experimental, drone-based music; as a film composer; and as a sought-after interpreter of some of the most revered works of modern classical music. Jensen has been a musician for her entire life. Having begun playing the cello at age three, she completed her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at The Juilliard School before expanding the sound palette of her instrument to include live looping and processing. She has released four LPs featuring her own music on the FatCat/130701 and Miasmah labels, with her latest being named by NPR as among the best albums of 2025 across all genres. As a film composer, her honors include a nomination for a 2021 Ariel Award for Best Original Music by the Mexican Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences. Films that she has scored have also been award winners at the Sundance Film Festival and International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA).

Jensen has a distinctive compositional approach, layering her cello through shifting loops and a chain of electronic effects to conjure a series of rich, drone-based sound fields. Pulsing, visceral and full of color, her work is deeply immersive and hallmarked by a powerful emotional resonance and an almost hallucinatory clarity. Often based upon elegant graphic scores, Jensen's slowly evolving sound worlds are built around structured improvisation, utilizing repetition and duration to suspend and disrupt the perception of time. Meditative yet with a sculptural sharpness and rigor, she has forged a powerful and precise vision. 

Her music has been described by Self-Titled as, “heavily processed, incredibly powerful neo-classical pieces that seem to come straight from another astral plane;” by Boomkat as “languorously void-touching ideas, scaling and sustaining a sublime tension;” while Bandcamp remarked upon “a kaleidoscope of pulsing movement rich in acoustic beating and charged with psychoacoustic effects, constantly shifting in density and viscous timbre.”

“languorously void-touching ideas, scaling and sustaining a sublime tension”
— Boomkat

NEWS

“heavily processed, incredibly powerful neo-classical pieces that seem to come straight from another astral plane”
— Self-Titled

PHOTOS

“The Zen clarity of her sound recalls masters like Phill Niblock, evoking universes by honing in on narrow ranges of frequency. But the way Jensen shifts her drones, building them gradually and then hard-cutting to completely new tones, feels singular.”
— Pitchfork, Best Experimental Albums of 2019
For this from that will be filled
Clarice Jensen
Holy Mother
Clarice Jensen
Joy
Clarice Jensen
Metastable
Clarice Jensen
“Clarice Jensen’s unsettling electronic score commingles with the camera work to build a sense of achingly slow-burn tension. Abstract interstitial montages let off a bit of steam with a propulsive electro soundtrack, marking the passing of time with images of the menacing and the mundane.”
— Los Angeles Times
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