Jazz trumpeter Marques Carroll’s pandemic dreams bear fruit on live album series

When coronavirus descended on Chicago, Marques Carroll made himself a promise. If the pandemic was the end of live music as we knew it, he was going “to go out swinging.”

Marques Carroll at Andy's Jazz Club on Jan. 20 2026. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)

The trumpeter, 47, has been a steady presence on the Chicago scene for decades. But, like so many others, the pandemic made him take stock of his career. For the first time, he felt emboldened to funnel creative energy into his projects, giving impromptu porch concerts with a combo at his Bucktown home and writing music with renewed urgency.

While Carroll’s albums “Live from Andy’s” and “Live from Winter’s” may have come out in November, they owe their existence to that period. So do the debuts which preceded them: 2021’s “The Ancestors’ Call” and 2022’s “Foundations.” (“Foundations” brought Carroll’s music to wider renown when two tracks, “Brother Payton BAM” and “Larry Sings,” were featured on episodes of FX’s “The Bear.”)

But at the end of the day, Carroll admits he’s a live-music guy. He set a goal to record a live recording series captured in the city’s four major clubs: Andy’s, Winter’s, Jazz Showcase and Green Mill. All feature his quintet, with saxophonist Brent Griffin, pianist Julius Tucker, drummer Greg Artry and bassist Christian Dillingham.

As of writing, all four records are in the can, with the Jazz Showcase and Green Mill installments planned for release sometime in late summer or early fall. A third, of alternative takes from the Andy’s sessions, came out on Jan. 2. By releasing the series, Carroll wanted to pay homage not only to his love of live recordings — as a teen, he was hooked on MTV’s “Unplugged” — but to the inimitable energy of those clubs, bustling again after the pandemic’s near-lethal silence.

Marques Carroll performs on stage with the Chi-Town Trumpet Summit at Andy's Jazz Club on Jan. 20 2026. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)

“These four places don’t have to be open. They could have closed a long time ago,” Carroll says.

At the time we connected, Carroll was catching a brief break between back-to-back shows promoting the album. He’d just completed a weekend run with his quintet at Jazz Showcase, as well as another Chi-Town Trumpet Summit, which invites two other trumpets to join him and his band on the Andy’s stage twice a month. But the next Summit, on Feb. 3, was just around the corner. So were two more quintet shows promoting the records: Feb. 6 at Andy’s and Feb. 20 at Winter’s.

Carroll balances it all as a full-time pedagogue. He’s taught at Chicago Jesuit Academy, a tuition-free elementary and middle school in Austin, for nearly 20 years and adjuncted at the University of Illinois Chicago for five. He also sits on the advisory board of BandWith, a major player in music education on the West Side. (BandWith is among the organizations participating in International Jazz Day when that global event touches down in Chicago in the spring.)

When Carroll moved from St. Louis to Chicago to study at DePaul University in 1990s, he would have never expected teaching would become such a huge part of his career. It’s just another way he followed in the footsteps of his grandfather — also a trumpet player, also inexhaustible, and a buddy of trumpeter Clark Terry’s to boot.

“He would basically take inner-city kids and give them music to get them off the streets — that was his thing,” Carroll says.

Marques Carroll, center, performs on stage with the Chi-Town Trumpet Summit at Andy's Jazz Club on Jan. 20 2026. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)

The originals on Carroll’s three “Live from…” releases so far offer a snapshot of this on-the-move artist. “Live from Andy’s” is full of riches, from the twinkling economy of “Afrocentric” to “The Ancestors’ Call Upon Us,” a polyrhythmic epic. The forward-shuffling “Riding with Claudette,” an “Andy’s” outtake, is part of a longer suite about civil rights activist Claudette Colvin, who died earlier this month. (Colvin was also the protagonist of “She Who Dared,” an opera which premiered at the Studebaker Theater in June.) And anyone listening to “Live from Winter’s” will commit the butter-smooth groove of “Soulful” to mental loop.

All reward deep listening, elements subtly shifting underfoot in an alert yet sensuous way. “I like modal playing; I like being able to take a melody, but then forget about it,” Carroll says. “There’s still this element of swing that I grew up in, from the ’90s, yet I still like this hip-hoppy stuff.”

The Trumpet Summit has also become a mainstay in Carroll’s calendar. The whole concept started with Andy’s co-owner Chris Chisholm, who suggested that Carroll riff on opera’s Three Tenors. The trumpeter admits he was skeptical at first. But through the Summit, Carroll has been able to tear it up alongside stars like the Chicago-born Marquis Hill and, on one memorable swing through town, Wynton Marsalis.

“He played his signature, ‘All the Things You Are,’ and he did ‘Cherokee’ at a very fast tempo, as he does,” Carroll recalls with a chuckle. “He gave another 45-minute, hour-long show, and then we sat around for another hour while he held court.”

With a schedule like Carroll’s, staying regimented isn’t a choice but a necessity. He keeps spreadsheets “like crazy” and sets aside Sunday evenings for his daughters, a 15-year-old and a 3-month-old newborn. Sleep? He probably doesn’t get enough, he admits.

“But I’m driven by the work,” he hastens to add. “I don’t like to sit still.”

As for the quintet, Carroll is committed to convening the group on bandstands at least once a month. At most, he’ll bring in sketches to the gig. But the rest is fully of-the-moment. Carroll says he hasn’t rehearsed the band “in years.”

“I love the spontaneity of bringing sketches in, because we’re just going to keep working it. I want to hear, ‘What’s your take on this?’” Carroll says.

That focus is paying off. Carroll says he can feel the group “taking more chances” together. Just the other day, after one of the quintet’s Showcase gigs, a musician colleague approached Carroll after the set and noted that the group had a “band sound.” For someone who idolizes Miles Davis’s Second Great Quintet and the late Roy Hargrove’s own distinctive unit, that’s always the goal.

“We are moving into that space of what I’ve been wanting to do for years,” Carroll says, “and I’m starting to see it.”

Hannah Edgar is a freelance critic.

Chi-Town Trumpet Summit is Feb. 3, followed by concerts Feb. 6 at Andy’s Jazz Club, 11 E. Hubbard St.; 312-642-6805 and andysjazzclub.com. Then Feb. 20 at Winter’s Jazz Club, 465 N. McClurg Court; www.wintersjazzclub.com.