Lucas Gillan's Many Blessings
Marquis Hill, trumpet
Jonathon Edwards, bari sax
Darius Savage, bass
Lucas Gillan, drums
Chicago is home to a little-known but thriving community of young jazz musicians who are staging a quiet revolution in the city’s music venues. Though they came of age with the sounds of alternative rock and hip hop in their ears, they came to choose jazz as their primary outlet for self-expression. Trained in university music programs, this generation of musical instigators creates art that speaks with a distinctly present-day voice. Count Lucas Gillan’s Many Blessings, a kinetic quartet of upstarts and one young veteran, among the revolutionaries.
Nothing substantial can exist without a strong foundation, however, and Gillan’s group—which consists of Marquis Hill on trumpet, Jonathon Edwards on baritone sax, Darius Savage on bass, and the bandleader on drums—is no exception. The sonic groundwork for the ensemble is made up of yesterday’s jazz visionaries; chief among them Ornette Coleman, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, and Ahmad Jamal. The unconventional instrumentation finds precedent in the famous Chet Baker/Gerry Mulligan quartet from the early ‘50s, but that group’s cool and composed aesthetic is far removed from the live wire that is Many Blessings. In fact, the large ensemble work of Mingus and his hero, Duke Ellington, is primarily responsible for Gillan’s baritone sax fixation. With the AACM-affiliated Savage playing bass, the influence of Chicago’s rich avant-garde jazz tradition is also felt in a very real way.
There’s much more to Gillan’s musical DNA than jazz, however. Growing up in Tucson, AZ with an evangelical pastor father and amateur drummer mother, he latched on to music at an early age. His formative years were spent performing in settings as varied as possible in a city the size of Tucson. Getting his start by drumming in church, Gillan eventually became deeply involved in the city’s underground rock scene, playing both drums and guitar in punk, hardcore and indie rock groups for audiences of his peers. All the while, he remained devoted to the craft of jazz drumming, studying privately with local authority Fred Hayes, playing in city-wide youth jazz ensembles, frequenting the city’s weekly jam sessions, and eventually gigging professionally around town.
He left Arizona to further his jazz studies at Northern Illinois University, whose recent alumni include notable Chicago jazz innovators Dave Miller, Greg Ward and Willerm Delisfort. NIU afforded Gillan the opportunity to tour and perform with a number of jazz greats, including Charles McPherson, John Clayton, Antonio Hart and Claudio Roditi. Now living and working in Chicago, he has gigged with established players like Fareed Haque, Bob Perna, Erin McDougald and Jerry Devivo as well as fellow talented youngsters such as Josh Moshier, Matt Ulery, Greg Spero, and Stuart Mindeman.
At this point, Gillan is perhaps best known as the man behind AccuJazz.com, a popular and innovative Internet jazz radio service. The job gives Gillan an uncommonly vivid perspective on the state of the current jazz scene, which is packed wall-to-wall with talent and fresh ideas. It was only a matter of time before the music swirling around in Gillan’s head found an outlet.
That outlet, Lucas Gillan’s Many Blessings, is made up of some of Chicago’s most promising young musicians and one of its most respected veterans. Gillan, Hill, and Edwards first played together in NIU’s Jazz Ensemble and have stayed in touch, personally and musically, ever since.
At the age of 22, Marquis Hill, the group’s lone Chicago native, has already become a first-call trumpet player on the scene. He has performed with a who’s who of Chicago jazz, including Bobby Broom, Willie Pickens, Ernest Dawkins, and, perhaps most memorably, vocalist Dee Alexander in her primetime performance at the 2009 Chicago Jazz Festival. Baritone saxophonist Jon Edwards keeps busy as one-third of the horn section in the popular soul/pop group The Right Now, who recently celebrated the release of their new full-length album with a sold-out show at Chicago’s 500-capacity Lincoln Hall. Edwards also frequently fills the bari spot in area big bands like the Mulligan Mosaics Big Band and Jeff Hedberg’s C11.
Bassist Darius Savage is the lone Gen-Xer in the group, and his 15 years of playing experience in Chicago are invaluable to his young bandmates. Savage has been the bassist of choice for many of the most important artists in Chicago’s world-renowned avant-garde jazz community, including Fred Anderson, Nicole Mitchell, Ernest Dawkins and Hamid Drake. He brings an energy and fearlessness that is contagious throughout the group.
Under the loose direction of Gillan, this quartet constructs fiery improvisations built on a bedrock of swinging rhythm. Gillan’s quirky original compositions often nod to Monk and Coleman, but are also forward-thinking in their extended forms, odd-time grooves and resourceful use of the ensemble’s voices. Gillan’s composing style has also been greatly influenced by the strong Chicago tradition of harmoniously melding composition with free improvisation. The group also performs Gillan’s inventive arrangements of compositions by Coleman and other favorite composers like Billy Strayhorn and Tadd Dameron.
