In The 1971 Connection (2008), Christensen uses a jazz big band to create music that is not at all swing, yet it still totally swings. The composer suggests that the work should not be played jazzy, but his preference is for a performance by jazz or rock musicians. Christensen keeps listeners on edge despite the music’s seeming stasis by exploring iterative sequences of events that are difficult to clearly discern—syncopations are completely skewed by repeated gestures occurring in different parts of the measure each time as well as by riffs including harmonics, quartertones, and even smaller intervals. (Frank J. Oteri, March 2012)