Chad Taylor Quintet

Chad Taylor is a highly prolific drummer, percussionist, composer, and bandleader who was born on March 19, 1973, in Tempe, Arizona, and grew up in Chicago, where he was shaped by the city's wide-open improvisational ethos. He earned a BFA in jazz performance from the New School in New York and an MFA in jazz history and research from Rutgers University, studying under the direction of Lewis Porter. Over the last 25 years, Taylor has established himself as a catalyst in progressive improvised music, collaborating with an impressive array of artists including cornetist Rob Mazurek (his partner in the Chicago Underground Duo), guitarist Jeff Parker, saxophonists James Brandon Lewis and Avram Fefer, and bassist Eric Revis. The Chad Taylor Quintet, which features trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson, tenor saxophonist Bryan Rogers, vibraphonist Victor Vieira-Branco, and bassist Matt Engle, represents a particularly cohesive group that Taylor has led, with the ensemble releasing the album *Smoke Shifter* in 2025 on Otherly Love Records. In 2024, Taylor was selected to lead the University of Pittsburgh's Jazz Studies Program while holding the university's William S. Dietrich II Endowed Chair in Jazz Studies, and he has lived in Philadelphia for close to a decade, where he continues to be an active fixture in the city's jazz scene.