Jennifer Thiessen

For me, join­ing the board of the CNMN is about fos­ter­ing a thriv­ing com­mu­ni­ty of cre­ative
musi­cians across many regions. When I moved back to Man­i­to­ba in 2021, after twen­ty years in
Mon­tre­al, I was uncer­tain about what it would be like to con­tin­ue my artis­tic prac­tice out­side of
the strong cre­ative com­mu­ni­ty I had become a part of. I rev­elled in that artis­tic hotbed and
relied on its pos­si­bil­i­ties and oppor­tu­ni­ties to devel­op my work. Mov­ing to Win­nipeg, it has
become par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant to me to stay con­nect­ed to a wide net­work of musi­cians, while
also dis­cov­er­ing the excel­lent scene here and want­i­ng to share it with oth­ers. I now also have a
posi­tion as artis­tic direc­tor of a clas­si­cal cham­ber music series in Win­nipeg, so am new­ly
involved in pro­gram­ming and pre­sent­ing. I need sup­port and con­nec­tion to con­tin­ue doing the
work I want to do, and I know oth­ers need this too. The CNMN address­es exact­ly this need. I
look for­ward to work­ing along­side won­der­ful friends and fel­low artists I’ve met over the years
and to meet­ing oth­ers for the first time through our work together.

Bio:
Mix­ing new sounds with instru­ments of the past, Jen­nifer Thiessen is known for impro­vis­ing
and com­mis­sion­ing new works on the vio­la and the vio­la d’amore as well as inter­pret­ing their
his­tor­i­cal reper­toire. She cre­ates new music as singer-song­writer Dai­ly Alice and with her duos
Park Sounds, S[ILK]S and Toninato/Thiessen, as well as many oth­er col­lab­o­ra­tions. Jen­nifer has
worked exten­sive­ly as a vio­list with con­tem­po­rary, clas­si­cal and his­tor­i­cal ensem­bles in
Mon­tre­al, Win­nipeg and across Cana­da. She is a cre­ative writer and con­tributes music
jour­nal­ism to Music­works mag­a­zine. Orig­i­nal­ly from Man­i­to­ba, Jen­nifer lived in Mon­tre­al for
two decades before mov­ing to Win­nipeg in 2021. She became Artis­tic Direc­tor of Vir­tu­osi
Con­certs in 2022. From with­in a mul­ti­plic­i­ty of artis­tic adven­tures, she remains ground­ed in a
pas­sion to cre­ate mean­ing­ful expe­ri­ences for her­self and her listeners.

www.jenniferthiessen.ca