What's New on WDCB... with Paul Abella

Three Chicagoans and Three trumpet players! What a fun week for new music on WDCB!

Bobby Lewis – Feels Like Spring (Cool Horn Records)

Trumpeter Bobby Lewis, having just turned 90, is still cooking. His latest album, Feels Like Spring, is proof of that. While two of these eight songs date back to 1996, the rest were recorded last year, and capture Lewis sounding as sharp as ever. He’s supported by a who’s who of Chicago talent, Pat Mallinger on saxophones, Russ Phillips on trombone, Andy Brown on guitar, Pete Benson or Jim Ryan on piano, Stewart Miller or Joe Policastro on bass, and Bob Rummage on drums. Foot stompers like “Kansas City Shout,” “Nue Blue Hue” or “Up and Down Broadway” are pure, swinging fun. “Feels Like Spring,” the title track to the album, is a lovely composition for flugelhorn, guitar and bass, and, if a song can sound like a Monet painting, this one nails it. “Old Fashioned Bach” is a smile inducing mashup of J.S. Bach’s “Chorale Prelude #1” and the Jerome Kern standard “I’m Old Fashioned.” All I can say is that it works way too well. The same could be said about Bobby Lewis. At an age when most people are understandably taking it easy, Bobby Lewis is out and about and swinging harder than plenty of people half his age. Feels Like Spring, indeed.

Connor Bernhard – Pathways (self-produced)

Chicagoan Connor Bernhard has recently released his album, Pathways. Recorded in 2024 with a young dream team of a band consisting of Julius Tucker on piano, Jeff Swanson on guitar, Evan Salvacion Levine on bass and Clif Wallace on drums, Bernhard plays the trumpet and wrote the majority of the songs on Pathways. What’s fascinating here is the stylistic variety happening on this album. The straightforward Be-Bop of “Moo the Mooche” might show up next to a fleet-footed Samba like “Claudio,” but it’s usually unlikely that either of those would show up next to the country-pop classic “Wichita Lineman.” And these days, it might be obvious for a young trumpet player to write something along the lines of “Lament for Roy,” but it’s less likely that a trumpet player would act on that admiration for Roy Hargrove with an arrangement of “Dat Dere” that sounds like it could have popped up on one of his records. And even with all of those choices, there’s still room for songs like “Jackalope” and “Altitude,” which sound fresh and in the moment. In short, Barnhard covers a lot of ground in eleven tracks on Pathways, and that makes the album a very enjoyable listen.

Ella Grace – Figments (Shifting Paradigm)

Figments, the debut album from trumpeter Ella Grace, packs a whole lot of music into its seven tracks. Whether it’s the funky “Dandelion,” the beautiful “Ballad for the Bittersweet,” or the odd-metered “Rapid Eye Movement,” Figments jumps from strength to strength throughout the course of its 35 minute run time. Grace assembled a fantastic group of musicians for the album: Garrett Munz on saxophones, Aval Stanley, Marion Mallard on bass, Jayden Richardson on drums and Julia Danielle on vocals both lyrical (“Cherry Blossoms in the Rain/Sailing Through a Cloud”), and wordless (“Echo”). My personal favorite on the album is “The Alchemist,” which starts off with a compelling bass solo before settling into a monster of a groove. If Figments is the debut album from Ella Grace, then we’ve got a lot to look forward to from this up and coming trumpet player. I, for one, am eager to hear what comes next.