Heat On - Heat On (2025)

In a jazz era that bristles with young talent, releasing an album that’s sure to be shortlisted for best debut recording of the year is impressive but Chicago drummer and composer Lily Finnegan’s consistently enthralling band Heat On album introduces her powerhouse, multi-generational, inside-out quartet.

“It is a love letter to Chicago,” Finnegan says. “I’m clearly inspired by the music, energy and ethos here. Chicago is about creating good music and art for itself. It’s about dealing with the whole spectrum of sound. Even the more angular, dissonant music comes back to deep grooves. The free things can still have a dance and melody.”

Her freedom-in-swing approach is evident from the opening track Green Milk; a harmelodic blast that quickly pivots away from the angular Ornettish feel into an extended dialogue between Jackson and Wilkerson, who at 71 is at the peak of his powers. Best known as the founder and director of the cutting-edge octet 8 Bold Souls and the 25-member performance ensemble Shadow Vignettes, Wilkerson has been at the center of the Chicago scene for half a century. In Heat On he swoops, swaggers and croons with complete authority, adding an eloquent new chapter to his discography.

Part of what makes Heat On such a revelatory project is the frisson created by the intertwined tandems of rhythm section and horns. Finnegan and Macri, who met through shared associations with Ken Vandermark, have often found that they share similar aesthetics, “connecting over their love of punk and rock and free improvised music,” she says.

Finnegan’s affirmation of freedom and groove, dissonance, dance and lyricism runs throughout Heat On. In many ways the project embodies the intergenerational nature of the Chicago scene, and Finnegan is both proud and humbled to be joining that history and lineage.

Edward Wilkerson Jr. - tenor saxophone
Fred Jackson Jr. - alto saxophone
Nick Macri - upright bass and electric bass
Lily Finnegan - drums