With profound grief and sorrow, the Department of Music remembers the life of Calum Jensen, a beloved member of the Department of Music and PhD student in Music History, who passed away from a sudden illness on February 13, 2026.
The Department of Music is honored to partner with the Jensen family to receive gifts in Calum’s memory. You can make a gift to the Music Department in memory of Calum, where funds will be directed to programs that honor Calum’s legacy.
Make a gift in Calum's memory
Calum was a promising scholar and composer, particularly interested in work at the intersection of philosophy, politics, and music since the nineteenth century. He was a true intellectual and a beautiful human being. Calum loved long days at the Regenstein, reading and rereading Adorno, puzzling out the mysteries of timbre, speculating about unwritten histories, and spending time with his partner, family, and friends.
Calum was raised in Brandon, Thunder Bay and Winnipeg, and graduated from McGill University (B.Mus. and M.Mus. - Composition) and SUNY at Stony Brook (Masters in Critical Music Studies). Calum was undertaking his PhD in Music History (Musicology) at the University of Chicago at the time of his passing, living with his beloved Christina, a fellow PhD student in Music History. Although new to Musicology, Calum had quickly made his mark with podium presentations at The American Musicological Society, co-chairing AMS working groups and his scholarship on spectral music and aesthetics. An eminent American Musicologist with whom Calum co-chaired a working-group wrote, "In all my years in this profession, I have not encountered a more promising scholar, a more thoughtful interlocuter, a more generous collaborator." Calum's loss to the Musicology world, and that of his family and friends, will be immense. A fine, principled man, filled with love, ever in search of meaning and truth, empathic and self-aware, he elevated many, through giving so generously of himself, while rigorously undertaking his scholarship. Calum elevated us, and our memories of him will elevate us.