Clarence Ewing: The Million Year Trip writesIn Rotation: The Dave McDonnell Group

One of the great errors perpetrated by Ken Burns’ (in)famous PBS Jazz series lies in how it dissed the future. According to the documentary’s small group of talking heads assembled to explain to the audience what’s relevant and what isn’t, all the great, important Jazz happened between 1920 (the height of Louis Armstrong) and 1960 (the height of Miles Davis). The stuff that happened later, the stuff that doesn’t sound like Satchmo and goes off on as-yet uncharted musical adventures, is just so much noise.

This attitude has permeated through to the casual music fan to the point where Jazz is considered a dead language. Which is a shame, because the art form continues to thrive in the 21st century, especially in Chicago, home of a huge amount of gifted musicians fiercely expressing themselves. One of the most recent examples is the Dave McDonnell group, featuring Midwestern Jazz heavyweights Jason Adasiewicz on vibraphone, Joshua Abrams (of Natural Information Society) on bass, and Quin Kirchner (of Wild Belle and NOMO) on drums. With McDonnell’s sax leading the way, the music is very much of the here and now – if it doesn’t sound like the past, that’s very much the point.

Tracks from The Dave McDonnell Group’s new album Eidetic, released on Whistler Records, are now playing in rotation and by request on CHIRP Radio.