Name: Chico Freeman Quartet
Start: 2026-10-04T20:00:00
Location: Dearborn Station

Chico Freeman

Jazz Showcase

In describing the Black music tradition, Pharoah Sanders once remarked to Bernice Johnson Reagon “to me, it’s all spiritual music.” The musical journey from blues to gospel and “jazz” and back is more natural than these categorical separations can ever be. Like the great practitioners of the blues and gospel, Joel Ross is interested in the story, in the way that it can reveal the divine promise that life need not forever be what it has been. His chosen medium is a sextet. His message is love others and sacrifice the self. Service to others is the best way to live love and to be Christlike. Gospel Music is service music. Service is what we call worship. “Playing an instrument is a form of worship, and I’ve been worshipping all my life,” said Dizzy Gillepsie. And like Diz, Ross is committed to worship, represented in and through his music.

Joel Ross

Dearborn Station

Dan Kaufman has emerged as a leading and promising young voice in Jazz Piano. Dan’s playing is adventurous and dynamic while firmly rooted in the jazz tradition. As a versatile and sensitive sideman , he has performed for audiences around the world, with many of the most prominent figures in jazz. From Jimmy Heath, Wynton Marsalis, Christian McBride and Mark Turner. He is also an accomplished composer and arranger.

Dan Kaufman Trio

Julián Pujols Quall is a Dominican-American pianist and keyboardist, improviser, composer and educator from Chicago who has performed classical and jazz repertoire throughout the continental United States as well as in the Dominican Republic, Spain, Belgium, Puerto Rico and Mexico. A classically trained artist, Peabody Conservatory graduate, and DePaul University National Concerto Competition for Young Performers First Prize Winner, their work has found a home in jazz performance, improvisation and cross-cultural collaboration since developing experimental collaborative programs as a founding member of the Peabody Improvisers Collective. They are a curator for the Discoveries Hear & Be Heard series at Fulcrum Point New Music Project, and a 2025 National Association of Latino Arts and Culture Institute Fellow. Julián has been lead instructor for the Afro-Caribbean Jazz Combo at the Segundo Ruiz Belvis Cultural Center After School Matters and is currently an accompanist at The Joffrey Ballet’s Grainger Academy. They are the host of “The Changes”, a trilingual interview show presenting local and international musicians on Lumpen Radio. Julián completed a 2024 Banff Center for the Arts Jazz and Sonic Arts composition/performance residency, released the single Rothko; Tlaloc and Totec with Carrier Records in 2023, and most recently had their compositions Chord Prelude and Moriviví premiere at the DiMenna Center for New and Classical Music during the 2024 Yarn/Wire Institute Festival in New York.

Julián and Friends

Wdcb 90.9fm

Boasting a warm, finely burnished tone and a robust melodic and harmonic imagination, tenor saxophonist Eric Alexander has been exploring new musical worlds from the outset. He started out on piano as a six-year-old, took up clarinet at nine, switched to alto sax when he was 12, and converted to tenor when jazz became his obsession during his one year at the University of Indiana, Bloomington (1986-87). At William Paterson College in New Jersey he advanced his studies under the tutelage of Harold Mabern, Joe Lovano, Rufus Reid, and others. "The people I listened to in college are still the cats that are influencing me today," says Alexander. "Monk, Dizzy, Sonny Stitt, Clifford Brown, Sonny Rollins, Jackie McLean, Joe Henderson--the legacy left by Bird and all the bebop pioneers, that language and that feel, that's the bread and butter of everything I do. George Coleman remains a big influence because of his very hip harmonic approach, and I'm still listening all the time to Coltrane because I feel that even in the wildest moments of his mid- to late-Sixties solos I can find these little kernels of melodic information and find ways to employ them in my own playing."

Eric Alexander & Vincent Herring Quintet

Jimmy Farace is a dedicated baritone saxophonist whose rich, resonant tone brings the beauty of the instrument to the forefront. A thoughtful composer and improviser, Farace creates music that is deeply human, exploring experiences everyone can relate to - growing pains, nostalgia, joy, and the small moments that shape our lives. With an unwavering belief in the instrument’s ability to tell profound musical stories, Farace has earned praise from some of jazz’s finest voices. DownBeat Magazine hailed him as “an outstanding new voice on baritone saxophone.” Saxophone legend Gary Smulyan observed: “His baritone playing is deeply emotional, mature, and his sound simply gorgeous. The combination of the writing and playing is stunning, wonderfully conceived, and in perfect balance and harmony.”

Jimmy Farace

An esteemed saxophonist, vocalist, and accomplished composer, Camille Thurman is one of the leading young standard bearers of jazz, making a considerable and dynamic contribution to its legacy. She is known for her creative brilliance, effortless mastery, and undeniably distinct approach to music as both a powerhouse vocalist and saxophonist.

Camille Thurman with the Darrell Green Quartet

Join CYSO’s Jazz Orchestra for their final performance of the year at Chicago’s legendary Jazz Showcase!

CYSO Jazz Orchestra

New Orleans born saxophonist Donald Harrison is a musician/composer who master musicians consider a master of every era of jazz, soul, funk, and a composer of orchestral classical music. He is also a genius, according to geniuses like Eddie Palmieri and Mike Clark. In the HBO drama Treme, Emmy winning director David Simon created two characters to portray how Harrison innovated new styles of music. Harrison has appeared as an actor/musician in 9 episodes of Treme, Oscar-winning director Johnathon Demme’s film Rachel Getting Married, Spike Lee’s When The Levee’s Broke documentary, and Marvel’s Luke Cage. This talented artist is the recognized Big Chief of Congo Square in Afro-New Orleans culture and was made a Chief in 2019 by Queen Diambi Kabatusuila in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa.

Donald Harrison Quartet

BakerzMillion is an all-star jazz sextet in the tradition of the classic Blue Note groups of the 1960s. Featuring Andy Baker (trombone, tunes), Steve Million (piano, tunes), Eric Jacobson (trumpet), Jim Gailloreto (saxophones), Tim Davis (drums) and John Tate (bass), the band was formed in 2005 to perform new, original compositions by co-leaders Andy Baker and Steve Million.

BakerzMillion

Guitar great Bobby Broom knows exactly when he first fell in love with the jazz organ. The magic moment came at age 10 when he put on one of the albums his father had brought home, Charles Earland’s Black Talk! Young Bobby didn’t know or care much about jazz yet. “I was just into music,” he says. But after playing the “Mighty Burner’s” now-classic 1969 album, he was sold.

Bobby Broom Trio CD Release

Joe Farnsworth has spent his life on the bandstand with the Kings of music, Pharoah Sanders, McCoy Tyner, Cedar Walton, and George Coleman. He is now sharing what spirit and wisdom the greats gave him with the great young Sarah Hanahan. Sarah is one the greatest young stars on the alto saxophone playing with the spirit of Jackie McLean and Pharaoh Sanders. Nobody sounds like she does.

Joe Farnsworth Quartet

Heralded as one of the most important saxophonists of our time, composer and producer, Chico Freeman has perfected an immediately recognizable approach to music and composition, blending what he has experienced from his past and providing fluidity into a future of infinite musical possibilities.