Featuring composer and arranger Lucas Gillan on drums, James Davis on trumpet, Jim Schram on tenor saxophone, and Daniel Thatcher on bass. 

Freedom and order. Lyricism and abstraction. Sensitivity and raucousness. Lucas Gillan’s Many Blessings, a Chicago-based jazz quartet, finds comfort in the space between these opposites. Gillan, the drummer and bandleader, composes music that hooks listeners with insistent grooves and memorable melodies even while subverting expectations with outré harmonies and freewheeling improvisations.

While Many Blessings' 2017 release, Arroyo, exclusively featured Gillan's original compositions, their new album, Chit-Chatting With Herbie, showcases Gillan's arrangements of the music of pianist Herbie Nichols, one of the great under-appreciated geniuses of jazz. The Many Blessings album is a track-by-track re-imagining of the 1956 Blue Note LP Herbie Nichols Trio. Gillan was inspired to arrange Nichols’ music for his piano-less quartet because of the common thread he felt with his own music — swinging, melodic tunes permeated by an oddball sense of humor and experimentation. Nichols died in 1963 of leukemia, never having earned the recognition he deserved. His music has gradually gained more attention by musicians and audiences in the decades since his death. Many Blessings is proud to help celebrate Nichols’ centennial and spread his utterly unique music to more ears.