Jazz Articles about Geof Bradfield

About Geof Bradfield

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

Geof Bradfield / Myra Melford / Ben Goldberg / Dana Hall: Open Or Close

Read "Open Or Close" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
September 5, 2026

Ornette Coleman may come to mind at the beginning of the spin of Open Or Close. This is understandable. The title song, which opens the set, is from Coleman's pen. Additionally, the jazz collective at work here--reedmen Geof Bradfield and Ben Goldberg, pianist Myra Melford and drummer Dana Hall play loose and free, à la Ornette, with a lot of seat-of-the-pants energy. The sound has a common thread strung out between Coleman's 1968 Blue Note Records album New York Is ...

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

Rich Willey: Laid Back Vol. 1, featuring John Swana

Read "Laid Back Vol. 1, featuring John Swana" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
June 20, 2026

Chicago-based trumpeter and composer Rich Willey oversees an impressive 11-piece ensemble on Laid Back, Vol. 1, which embodies seven of his melodically enticing and rhythmically strong compositions, all neatly arranged by Wally Minko. The one drawback in this otherwise pleasing session is a disconcerting funk/Latin beat, which lends an aura of sameness to every number that serves to weaken its purpose and impede efforts to separate it from the herd. That is countered to some extent by the ...

Album Review

Rich Willey: Laid Back Vol. 1, featuring John Swana

by Jack Bowers
June 13, 2026

Chicago-based trumpeter and composer Rich Willey oversees an impressive eleven-piece ensemble on Best Laid Plans, which embodies seven of his melodically enticing and rhythmically strong compositions, all neatly arranged by Wally Minko. The one clear drawback in this otherwise pleasing session, however, is an incessant rock beat, which lends an aura of sameness to every number that serves to weaken its purpose and impede even the most valiant efforts to separate it from the herd. That is countered ...

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 ...