Results for "Chicago"

Jon Deitemyer

Jon Deitemyer has established himself as a unique and versatile voice in modern jazz drumming. After graduating from the esteemed University of North Texas where he studied with Ed Soph and Lynn Seaton, Jon settled in Chicago and quickly became a fixture in the city's expansive creative music community. Jon has been a member of Greenleaf artist Matt Ulery's various ensembles since 2006, and currently performs with Concord recording artist Patricia Barber. In addition, Jon has performed and recorded with Zach Brock, Phil Markowitz, Ben Paterson (MaxJazz), Grazyna Auguscik (EMI), Renee Fleming, Lynne Arriale, and American Public Media's "Prairie Home Companion". Jon is also an active educator, with positions at Loyola University Chicago and the Chicago Academy for the Arts.

Ashley Summers

Born: March 27, 1983

Bassist, composer and educator Ashley Summers is a Canadian-born, Chicago-based artist whose talents have brought her to stages all over the world.  Known for a lyrical style that is punctuated by a sinewy impetuousness, Summers's artistic perspective has a striking sincerity that is both invigorating and nostalgic.    Summers has brought her "glorious tone that pours forth passion and groove" (Jazzreview.com, 2010) to the North Sea Jazz Festival, the Umbria Jazz Festival, and Jazz a Vienne.  She has also toured venues throughout the US, from concert halls like the Kennedy Center for the Arts to Shapeshifter Lab in Brooklyn and the Lilypad in Boston.  Recent performances have included special guests Aaron Goldberg, Corey Christiansen, Leo Blanco, Seamus Blake and Kenny Werner.   For more than a decade, Summers has been leading her own large and small ensembles in an effort to showcase her original music and the extraordinary talent of her peers in Canada, the US and Europe.  Her compositional style emphasizes effusive melodies and dynamic harmonies derived from a vast range of musical influences.  The result is a compelling narrative that chronicles stories of courage, despair, resilience, mysticism and more.  Recently, the title track on Summers's 2017 ears&eyes Records release, 'True North', was recognized by the International Society for Jazz Arrangers and Composers as the 2017 "Outstanding New Music Composition" in the small ensemble category.  The piece was performed by members of the Chuck Owen Big Band at ISJCA's annual symposium in Tampa, FL, in May 2017.   In addition to her busy performance schedule, Summers is an in-demand educator.  For several years she served as director of IAJE Canada's "Jazzmobile" project, which placed professional jazz musicians in Canadian schools to motivate, educate and inspire young musicians.  She also frequently serves as an adjudicator, guest artist and clinician at festivals and universities throughout Canada and the US, including the annual Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival in Moscow.  She spends considerable time in Summer months as a faculty member for jazz intensives throughout North America and frequently works with the Archipelago Project, a non-profit music education ensemble based in Traverse City, MI.  She has also held interim faculty appointments at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Ashland University and Kent State University and recently completed a full-time visiting Jazz Studies faculty position at Morehead State University in Kentucky.    Although she is a proud Canadian citizen, Summers is thrilled to be in Chicago, IL, where she is perpetually developing her own projects and supporting a variety of exciting local and international artists in jazz and other genres, both live and in the studio.  She recently debuted a new quintet, ‘Ashley Summers’s Raîson d'Être', at The Whistler in Chicago, which features longtime collaborators Daniel Bruce, Daniel Murphy and Chris Baker as well as the outstanding young tenor saxophonist Dustin Laurenzi.  Her long-awaited debut album as a leader, featuring saxophonist Seamus Blake, was recently released on March 24th, 2017, on the ears&eyes Records label. ​ "...a glorious tone that pours forth passion and groove." - JazzReview.com, 2010 ​ "...Summers' lyrical and sinewy bass..

Gustavo Cortiñas

Born: September 7, 1987

Embracing a multicultural language, while investing in a variety of disciplines within the music itself, Mexican born, and Chicago based drummer, composer, & producer Gustavo Cortiñas, has distinguished himself as a dynamic and melodic artist, committed to building empathy and understanding through music, in times of border walls and reductive narratives. Described as “One of Chicago’s most imaginative and exciting composers” (AllAboutJazz), “Cortiñas’ music is bluesy and deeply felt..sometimes it is raucus, sometimes solemn, but the music is always drenched in emotion.” (Modern Drummer). Through his seven productions as a leader, "Snapshot" (2013), "ESSE" (2017) “Desafío Candente” (2021), “Kind Regards” (2022), “Live in Chicago” (2024), "The Crisis Knows No Borders" (2025), and “The Drum Also Sings” (2026), Cortiñas proves time and again his ability for “great storytelling without saying a word” (Downbeat). “Gustavo Cortiñas is a musician with a message, one of social justice. He delivers it in a style that fuses the melodic sensibilities of his ancestral Mexico with the complex syncopation of jazz.” (ALLABOUTJAZZ). Along with fellow master drummers Dave King & Isaiah Spencer, Cortiñas’s latest album "The Drum Also Sings", explores the emotional and spiritual resonance of rhythm through music that speaks to joy, grief, resilience, and renewal. Emerging from moments of introspection and uncertainty, the project approaches the drum not only as an instrument, but as a voice — one capable of carrying memory, prayer, ancestry, and transformation. “Cortiñas doesn’t just write music—he builds bold, urgent conversations into his compositions.” (jazzviews.net) Through these critically acclaimed productions and his participation in more than 50 other discographic productions, “Cortiñas’s deft touch reaffirms his status as one of the great drummers in the City’s new guard.” (ChicagoReader).

Joel Ross

For the past several years, Joel Ross has been refining an expression that’s true to his sound and his generation. In 2019, the vibraphonist-composer released his anticipated Blue Note debut KingMaker to eruptive critical acclaim. He’s topped the DownBeat Critics Poll Rising Star category for vibraphone and in 2017, he became one of the youngest artists to receive a coveted Residency Commission from The Jazz Gallery. With the release of Who Are You? (Blue Note, 2020), Ross shares the culmination of a year-long exercise in experimenting and risk-taking on and off the bandstand. Inspired by mentor Stefon Harris’ empathetic, whole-self approach to articulation, Ross has adopted an entire ethos dependent on truthful, ongoing communication

Heisenberg Uncertainty Players

Active since: 2011

Heisenberg Uncertainty Players (HUP) is a 17-piece Chicago-area jazz ensemble that plays only original compositions and arrangements from members of the group. Formed in 2011, HUP has been featured around the Chicago area in venues like The Jazz Showcase, Martyrs’, Fitzgerald’s Night Club, The Logan Center for the Arts, and WGN-TV, and they currently hold a monthly residency at Wicker Park’s Phyllis’ Musical Inn. They have arranged a wide variety of music, covering jazz standards and showtunes to versions of songs by Radiohead, Led Zeppelin, 50 Cent, and other pop/rock artists

Clay Grossman

Born: March 20

Clay Grossman, a mainstay on the Chicago jazz scene for almost four decades, began his professional career at the age of the 19. He has been passing on his sage drum knowledge and wisdom to aspiring students of the drum-set over 20 years. Clay studied drums with Marshall Thompson and Ian Wallace.

Clay has performed with Yves Francois, Franz Jackson, {{m: Lin Halliday = 7352}}, and Burton Greene

Highland Park Pops Big Band

The Highland Park Pops Big Band is a 17-piece jazz band that plays swing tunes, jazz favorites, dance music and big band standards. Performing primarily in the northern Chicago suburbs, the Highland Park Pops Big Band is interested in entertaining at your next public event or benefit. For over three decades, the Highland Park Pops Big Band has kept jazz from the big band era alive on the North Shore, playing the classic and popular arrangements of Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Woody Herman, Stan Kenton and many other renowned artists and styles. The music is timeless, and the full, brassy sound is enjoyed by music lovers of all ages at outdoor programs, civic functions and dances. The Highland Park Pops Big Band performs at public events, benefits, concerts and outdoor summertime functions

Stu Mindeman

Pianist | Keyboardist | Composer | Producer | Copyist

Stu Mindeman has performed, toured, and recorded with artists across the musical spectrum, from Jazz legends Branford Marsalis, Dave Weckl, and Kurt Elling, to Folk icon Judy Collins; from Hip-hop star Ana Tijoux to the Chicago Lyric Opera.

Stu has released two original albums to critical acclaim: “In Your Waking Eyes: Poems by Langston Hughes” (2014), and “Woven Threads” (Sunnyside Records, 2018).

Reunion Jazz Orchestra

Birds of Chicago

Birds of Chicago, is a collective based around JT Nero and Allison Russell. Whether touring as a duo or with the full family band, Nero and Russell have emerged as two of the most compelling new voices in North American Roots music.
For several years Russell and Nero’s respective bands, Po' Girl (Vancouver, BC) and JT and the Clouds (Chicago, IL), have collaborated extensively, but on 2011’s Mountains/Forests, released under the JT Nero banner, they tapped into the true, bewitching power of their voices together on an entire record. It also featured the full cast of characters that would round out the Birds of Chicago ensemble -- the Clouds and Michelle McGrath, the luminous singer and picker from the hidden hills of Southeast Ohio. The record received critical raves and won them new fans on both side of the Atlantic, and created a great deal of excitement for the first official Birds of Chicago album, slated for release on October 2, 2012. Nero’s fractured country-soul voice wrapped in Russell’s silver and gold tones, is a fine thing