Jazz Articles about Clark Sommers

About Clark Sommers

Album Review

Today's hipster jazz musicians do not play standards. Perhaps “poseur" is a better description for artists who deliberately eschew classic compositions. Yet standards and familiar songs serve an important purpose in jazz: they provide a shared musical language, a lingua franca through which musicians communicate and listeners can measure the quality of an interpretation. Maybe, just maybe, the poseurs avoid standards because they don't want to be found out. Chicago pianist Tommy Muellner is no poseur. In fact, ...

Album Review

Clark Sommers: WaBaSH

by Jack Bowers
August 7, 2026

Wabash is the name of a river in Indiana and Illinois, an avenue in Chicago and, what is most relevant to this recording, the name of the quartet that performs on the avenue, a respectable group led by bassist Clark Sommers. Sommers' WaBaSH ensemble varies from the quartet norm in that two of its members, John Wojciechowski and Geof Bradfield, are saxophonists (who double on flute and bass clarinet, respectively). The group's fourth member is drummer Dana Hall. ...

Album Review

Clark Sommers: WaBaSH

by Troy Dostert
July 30, 2026

An integral component of the Chicago-based jazz community, bassist Clark Sommers has honed his craft as a sideman with everyone from Kurt Elling to Jon Irabagon, with a multifaceted fluency that extends from mainstream jazz to more adventurous projects. And from time to time he also gets to flex as a leader, starting with his debut effort in 2013, Ba(SH) (Origin Records), a recording which documented his long-standing trio with fellow Chicago stalwarts Geof Bradfield on saxophone and Dana Hall ...

Album Review

Dana Hall/Clark Sommers/Chris Madsen: Threefold

Read "Threefold" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
April 23, 2026

Threefold, the second recording by the Chicago-based chordless trio of saxophonist Chris Madsen, bassist Clark Sommers and drummer Dana Hall, might well be called three-of-a-mind, as that is how closely the threesome works together on this album of original music written especially for the ensemble by Madsen and Sommers. While Madsen's voice, on tenor or soprano sax, is inherently the more outspoken of the three, he is shadowed and supported every step of the way by Sommers' and ...

Album Review

Jon Irabagon: Someone to Someone

Read "Someone to Someone" reviewed by Stefano Merighi

by Stefano Merighi
April 6, 2026

Il sassofonista e compositore Jon Irabagon è un altro super virtuoso del nostro tempo: ecletttico, onnivoro musicalmente, molto prolifico. Questo recente disco presenta una formazione nuova, PlainsPeak, un quartetto convenzionale, e si offre come un caloroso omaggio alla città di Chicago, a partire dalle note di presentazione, scritte da Jon stesso, bravissimo nel comporre una guida sintetica di tutto ciò che è influente nella Windy City--dai panorami architettonici alla fisionomia culinaria, dalla centralità dell'ambiente lacustre alla intensa vita culturale e ...

Album Review

Josh Achiron: Climbing

by Jack Bowers
April 2, 2026

On his debut album, Climbing, Chicago-based guitarist, composer and educator Joshua Achiron leads a trio of battle-tested musicians through a program that consists of seven of his original compositions and Duke Ellington's frisky “Take the Coltrane." If diversity was the goal, mission accomplished. No two tracks are comparable, and the quartet traverses a broad expanse of harmonic and rhythmic territory, touching on ballads and blues to fusion and funk. Much of what Achiron has to say is ...

Album Review

Josh Archiron: Climbing

Read "Climbing" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
March 10, 2026

Geof Bradfield, co-founder of Calligram Records along with Chad McCullough, introduces a compelling new voice from Chicago's ever-fertile jazz scene. Climbing, the debut recording by guitarist Joshua Archiron, pairs the young bandleader with a seasoned and deeply attuned rhythm section: Bradfield on tenor saxophone, bassist Clark Sommers and drummer Dana Hall. Archiron's program, seven originals plus a well-chosen standard, unfolds with striking assurance. The quartet navigates the material with a supple, unforced cohesion that belies the guitarist's newcomer ...