Bill McFarland

Bill McFarland and his band The Chicago Fire Horns can be  heard on the following Earwig recordings:  Big Jack Johnson’s Daddy, When Is Mama Comin Home? (4916) and Liz Mandeville’s Ready To Cheat (4945) and Back In Love Again (4949).

Award-winning trombonist/composer/arranger Bill McFarland leads The Chicago Fire Horns, a jazz band that demonstrates a high level of artistic merit and is cohesive and improvisational in its concert performances. The group is a miniaturization of the big band style of Art Blakey’s expanded 1960’s Jazz Messengers. Bill has performed with, arranged for, and recorded with Albert Collins, Son Seals, Fenton Robinson, Lonnie Brooks, Aretha Franklin, Etta James, Koko Taylor and Otis Clay.

Of The Chicago Fire Horns, Chicago Reader jazz critic Neil Tesser says, “You almost can’t go wrong with a lineup like Bill McFarland’s: a potent hard-driving outfit that matches his throaty trombone with a beef-stew saxophonist, Hank Ford, and a fluent, octave-stretching trumpet ace, Kenny Anderson.”

The Chicago Tribune’s Howard Reich adds, “This band’s taut rhythms, its front line’s muscular quality, and its rhythm section’s aggressiveness makes The Chicago Horns sound more like a small jazz symphony….”

–“One of the most viscerally exciting Chicago jazz bands to come along in years!” (Howard Reich, Chicago Tribune)

Source:  Illinois Arts Council Agency