Owen Jensen

Owen Jensen studied music at Auckland University under William Thomas but left before completing his degree. He’d initially studied engineering but a passion for music took him to vaudeville and dance bands. He organised lunchtime concerts at the Tower Tea Rooms in Auckland before becoming the official 1YA piano accompanist. In 1940 he founded the Auckland String Players, and in 1941 launched the music magazine Music Ho (named after Constant Lambert’s influential book on 20th Century Music). It continued until 1948. In 1946 he played a prominent part in establishing the Community Arts Service that sent performers, musicians, drama and art, around the country. As part of this he founded the Cambridge Music School and invited Douglas Lilburn to speak to the students – the famous ‘A Search for Tradition’ lecture was the result that set New Zealand music on a new path. After a brief spell in London in 1959 he moved to Wellington and began a long and influential career as music critic for the Evening Post. In 1979 he received a Citation for Services to New Zealand from the New Zealand Composers Association. He had made Music Ho a radio programme, and received a Mobil Radio for it in 1986. He retired in 1987.

His composing consisted mainly of incidental music for radio and television plays. Fly Envious Time and At Fountain Court were performed at one of the 1935 British Music League twice- yearly concerts of New Zealand compositions in Lower Hutt, although accurate dating beyond that is uncertain.