Introducing tenor Mark Jensen! Here is what Michele Baum had to say about him at Compline this past weekend:
“Were he introduced according to his Scandinavian ancestry, his name would be pronounced MAR-kus YEN-sen. Mark Jensen was born in Annecy, also known as “the Venice of France”—a town east of Lyon and due south of Geneva, Switzerland. He has skied the Alps and the Rockies, and although the mountains near Seven Springs resort suffer by comparison, he enjoys skiing there, too.
The family moved to Lexington, Mass., while Mark was a baby, later settling in Wethersfield, Conn. (Also the hometown of our choirmaster, Mark Boyle.) Because of this, he is schooled in colonial history. His family is well seasoned with pastors on both sides, and he was raised in the Evangelical Free Church, a Scandinavian style of evangelical Protestantism. He is the middle child of three brothers; the eldest, Matthew, is a pastor in Portland, Ore. A grandfather and an uncle also were pastors. In fact, the family is the fourth generation in the Wethersfield Evangelical Free Church. Mark’s younger brother, Luke (notice a trend?), works in the family business, the Jensen Machine Co. of Newington, Conn.
Mark graduated from Carnegie Mellon University. He is a software engineer, having fallen in love with programming during elementary school. He considers himself lucky to have found his calling so early in life. He’s a relative newlywed, married for the second time in May 2019. He has two children. Skye, 21, studied computer science at the Rochester Institute of Technology and works for a robotics firm. David, 18, is an engineering major at Carnegie Mellon University.
Mark and his wife, Bronwyn, live in Squirrel Hill and attend the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer. Mark has been singing for many years, performing in high school and church camp musicals. What he loves most about the Pittsburgh Compline Choir is learning new music.”