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Quin Kirchner

Quinlan Kirchner (b. December 14, 1981) is a drummer, composer, improvisor & DJ from Chicago, Illinois. He first started his musical studies at the age of 10 at the famed Academy of Movement and Music of Oak Park and later at the Merit Music Program of Chicago. Learning from Chicago educator, Don Skoog, his studies soon grew to include the traditions of Afro-Cuban drumming, taking him to Havana, Cuba to study under acclaimed percussionists José Eládio, Omar Rojas & Don Poncho Terry. His early exposure to expressive arts and dedicated practice led him to earn a Basin Street Scholarship to the University of New Orleans, led by Ellis Marsalis, at the age of 18. There, Kirchner learned under the guidance of the city’s drumming masters including Ricky Sebastian, Jason Marsalis, Troy Davis and Johnny Vidacovich and his undergraduate studies led to a B.A. in Music, Jazz Studies, and the Gregory Frederico Senior of the Year Award. It was also while in New Orleans that Kirchner began his career as a performing & recording artist with QMRplus, Red Shift, The Other Planets, The Hall Monitors, Jeff Albert Trio & Quartet, Adam Croce, Irene Sage, Ed Petersen and others. After the dislocation caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Kirchner moved to New York for Masters Degree studies at the Manhattan School of Music under John Riley before relocating to Chicago.

In the years since his return to his native Chicago, Kirchner has become a ubiquitous drumming force throughout the city's diverse music scene. He has led countless large & small groups including the Broste/Beach/Kirchner Trio, Head with Wings, Ear to the Ground, Golombisky/Kirchner Duo, Lost Levels, Kirchner/Van Duerm/Lux & The Quin Kirchner Trio, Quartet, Ensemble & Group. In 2006, he was commissioned by the Umbrella Music Organization to compose and perform a 4-movement piece for string quartet & percussion entitled The Quagmire String Quartets. In 2010 he was selected as a member of the New Generation, a cross-cultural exchange in Dortmund, Germany led by Georg Graewe and Tobias Delias as part of the Ruhr 2010 Cultural Capital of Europe.

Kirchner is widely known as a popular sideman performing with such musicians as Rob Mazurek, Jeb Bishop, Jeff Parker, Greg Ward, Dave Rempis, Paul Giallorenzo, Mars Williams, Ryley Walker, Nick Mazzarella, Nate Lepine, Dave Miller, Jason Stein, Keefe Jackson & Matt Ulery to name a few. He has toured, performed and recorded with many different groups including Greg Ward's Fitted Shards, The Nate Lepine Quartet, The Nick Mazzarella Quintet, Bill MacKay's Darts & Arrows, Paul Giallorenzo's GitGo, The Lucky 7s, blink., ZING!, Health&Beauty, In Tall Buildings, NOMO & Wild Belle, among others. His musical talents have been showcased on stages all across North America and in over 20 countries around the world in various venues, most notably The Chicago Jazz Festival, The Montreal Jazz Festival, The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, The Vancouver Jazz Festival, Austin City Limits Festival, Voodoo Music & Arts Experience, Lollapalooza, Coachella, Outside Lands, Firefly Festival, Made in Chicago Festival (Poznan, PL), Music Meeting Festival (Nijmegen, NE), Au Foin De La Rue (St. Denis, FR), Festival Corona Capital (Mexico City, DF) and many more.

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4
Album Review

Rob Clearfield and Quin Kirchner: Concentric Orbits

Read "Concentric Orbits" reviewed by Troy Dostert


Listeners familiar with the current Chicago jazz scene will need no introduction to pianist Rob Clearfield and drummer Quin Kirchner. Both have been intrinsic to others' projects over the years, such as Matt Ulery's Delicate Charms (Woolgathering, 2019) and Greg Ward's High Alert (Sugah Hoof, 2020), but their most prominent partnership to date is probably Kirchner's own The Shadows and the Light (Astral Spirits, 2020), an absorbing double album with infectious grooves galore, many of which were anchored by Clearfield's ...

6
Album Review

Matt Ulery's Delicate Charms: Live at the Green Mill

Read "Live at the Green Mill" reviewed by Troy Dostert


One of the central figures of Chicago's thriving jazz scene, bassist Matt Ulery has cultivated fruitful relationships with a core of compatriots who embody the grit and beauty of the music coming out of the Windy City. He maintains a host of projects, one of the foremost being Delicate Charms, a group that released its self-titled debut in 2019 on Woolgathering Records; alto saxophonist Greg Ward, pianist Rob Clearfield, drummer Quin Kirchner and violinist Zach Brock assist Ulery in creating ...

15
Year in Review

Mark Corroto's Best Releases Of 2020

Read "Mark Corroto's Best Releases Of 2020" reviewed by Mark Corroto


Goodbye to 2020 and for the most part good riddance. Unless of course, we are talking about great music. Hopefully, your self isolation bubble had good sounds. Keeping in mind the global pandemic will not end soon, here's a list of my top 18 releases for 2020. I hope they can ease the pain of social distancing. Quin Kirchner The Shadows And The Light Astral Spirits Rudresh Mahanthappa Hero .Trio ...

2
Album Review

Matt Ulery: Delicate Charms

Read "Delicate Charms" reviewed by Neri Pollastri


Nuovo album del contrabbassista chicagoano Matt Ulery, che riunisce in quintetto alcuni suoi frequenti collaboratori per realizzare un lavoro di brillante e articolato jazz moderno. La formazione vede il leader affiancato dal pianista Rob Clearfield e dal batterista Quin Kirchner, mentre la front line è composta dal sax contralto di Greg Ward e dal violino di Zach Brock, che con Ulery ha recentemente pubblicato l'ottimo Wonderment. L'ora abbondante di musica, tutta del contrabbassista, si suddivide in sette brani ...

11
Album Review

Quin Kirchner: The Shadows and The Light

Read "The Shadows and The Light" reviewed by Mark Corroto


Francis Ford Coppola's Vietnam war film, Apocalypse Now, was released in 1979. After sitting for 2 and ½ hours, a viewer might have hoped for theater management to stand at the exits to hand out pamphlets explaining what had just gone down. The conflict had ended 4 years prior, and most war movies, pre- Vietnam, were straight-forward, America-saves-the-world affairs. Goodnight. In between a surf crazed Robert Duval, Playboy Bunnies, and the insane Colonel Kurtz played by Marlon Brando, the movie ...

10
Album Review

Quin Kirchner: The Shadows and The Light

Read "The Shadows and The Light" reviewed by Kevin Press


Add Chicago's Quin Kirchner to the growing list of young jazz artists who've dropped impressive multi-disc releases in recent years. It has become a kind of rite of passage for a new breed of heavy hitters, these double-and triple-album sets. They are not vanity projects. Not the good ones, anyway. They come from deep pools of creativity. The kind a very few young artists have accessible to them in the early prime of their careers. Kirchner's follow-up to ...

1
Album Review

Matt Ulery: Delicate Charms

Read "Delicate Charms" reviewed by Jerome Wilson


Bassist Matt Ulery works in several groups with differing approaches to jazz and art music. Delicate Charms features a quintet which mixes the romantic lightness of European classical music, the slippery unpredictability of jazz and the thrusting rhythms of progressive rock through a singular combination of alto sax, violin and piano. The CD's opening track, “Coping" lays out the band's agenda. It starts with a slow, dignified theme played by saxophonist Greg Ward and violinist Zach Brock, over ...

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The Shadows and The Light

“One of Chicago’s great jazz talents, Quin Kirchner’s work grows increasingly consequential with each release – his new double LP sits among the year’s best and most important jazz releases.” - Kevin Press, The Moderns

“The Shadows and the Light is a tightly plotted-out dream world that showcases Kirchner’s creative spirit, as well as the seriousness and refinement he brings to the table.” - Jordannah Elizabeth, Chicago Reader

“...an extremely well presented & well executed cohesive work...” - Tom Burris, The Free Jazz Collective

“One of the boldest, most fearless and talented drummers in music today.” - Ryan Arnold, WXRT Chicago

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Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Concentric Orbits

Astral Spirits
2022

buy

Live at the Green Mill

Woolgathering Records
2021

buy

The Shadows and The...

Astral Spirits
2020

buy

Delicate Charms

Woolgathering Records
2019

buy

The Other Side of Time

Astral Spirits
2018

buy

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