Scott Burns concerts

About Scott Burns

Dayton, Ohio–born and Chicago-based, Scott Burns is a tenor saxophonist working in straight-ahead jazz, hard bop, and composition-led small-group settings. The attention-getter is a long-running local profile paired with a concise leader catalog: his 2006 Origin Records debut, Passages, centers eight originals around a Chicago quartet, while his work has also carried him into the Chicago Jazz Orchestra and national dates with Harry Connick Jr.

From Dayton to a Chicago Bandstand

Burns developed professionally in the Dayton/Cincinnati corridor, where credits included the Blue Wisp Big Band, PsychoAcoustic Orchestra, Cincinnati Pops, and a 1996 Cincinnati-series appearance with Clark Terry. He moved to Chicago in 1998 for DePaul University’s master’s program, earning a DownBeat outstanding-soloist award the following year. His bandleader project took tangible recorded form in 2005, when Burns, pianist Ron Perrillo, bassist Dennis Carroll, and drummer-percussionist George Fludas cut the sessions that became Passages; the album arrived through Origin in 2006 as his first release under his own name.

Two Records That Define the Case

Passages (2006, Origin Records) remains Burns’s central leader statement. Recorded at Chicago’s WBEZ studios in September 2005, it gives the tenor saxophonist a quartet with enough space for composed themes, rhythm-section dialogue, and extended solo design. Origin describes the material as a set of originals moving among swinging, moody, and searching moods; the sequencing bears that out. “Lead the Way” opens with quick-moving straight-ahead momentum, “Black Orchid” supplies a brooding ballad contour, “Storm Rising” works a minor-blues frame, and “Eddies in the Stream” stretches to nearly ten minutes. The change here is authorship: Burns presents himself as composer, producer, and bandleader, with Perrillo, Carroll, and Fludas functioning as a working unit instead of backdrop. Tenor Time (2022, AFAR Music) widens that proposition from quartet leadership to shared front-line writing. Burns joins fellow Chicago tenors John Wojciechowski and Geof Bradfield, with the project’s music built around harmony, counterpoint, and unison writing. Burns contributes “Force Majeure,” identified by Andy’s Jazz Club as an up-tempo bebop piece; Bradfield and Wojciechowski bring contrasting ballad and modal-waltz material. For a listener, the useful distinction is scale: Passages is the direct entry point for Burns’s individual voice, while Tenor Time foregrounds the conversational possibilities of three equal saxophones and gives his writing a more collective frame.

The Chicago Network in the Credits

Burns’s collaborations map a practical Chicago jazz circuit. He has played with pianist Ron Perrillo, drummer George Fludas, guitarist Bobby Broom, pianist Ryan Cohan, bassist Clark Sommers, and drummer Dana Hall, alongside work in the Chicago Jazz Ensemble and Chicago Jazz Orchestra. His touring résumé includes two and a half years with the Mighty Blue Kings and selected dates with Harry Connick Jr. Tenor Time adds Wojciechowski and Bradfield as a continuing saxophone partnership, while DePaul lists Burns as Director of Jazz Studies, linking his performing life to the city’s teaching infrastructure.

What the Local Live Record Shows

The evidence points to a musician whose live work is built for recurring Chicago club engagements, with room for both a leader set and sideman appearances. Andy’s Jazz Club hosted a Burns quartet for three sets in June 2008; a contemporary All About Jazz review documented a program containing Wayne Shorter material, Horace Silver’s “Summer in Central Park,” and Dizzy Gillespie’s “A Night in Tunisia.” Burns’s own calendar then records four Wednesday Organ Quartet engagements at Andy’s in August 2021, each with two sets, plus a March 25–26, 2022 quartet return. Those dates establish at least six leader-booked nights at the 11 E. Hubbard Street room across the archive, with repeat collaborators including Fludas, Carroll, Clark Sommers, and organist Pete Benson. The format favors standards, originals, and flexible personnel over a fixed touring production.

The August 2026 Stop

The latest album identified in Burns’s available performance record is Tenor Time, the 2022 AFAR Music collaboration with Bradfield and Wojciechowski. His documented 2026 activity includes an Andy’s Jazz Club engagement on Friday, August 14, with two sets scheduled from 6:00–7:15 p.m. and 8:15–9:30 p.m. CrowdMate lists four Chicago dates: two sets at Andy’s on August 14 and two more on Saturday, August 15. For this run, the useful expectation comes from the venue history: a local working-musician set shaped by the room’s two-show schedule.

Start Here

Start with “Lead the Way” for Burns’s brisk, hard-driving quartet language; “Black Orchid” for the darker ballad side of Passages; and “Force Majeure” for his contribution to Tenor Time’s shared three-saxophone book.

Sources

1. Bio — Scott Burns — Scott Burns
2. Jazz Studies — DePaul University School of Music
3. Scott Burns — Passages — Origin Records
4. Origin Artist: Scott Burns — Origin Records
5. 2nd Set With Scott Burns — Andy's Jazz Club
6. Performances — Scott Burns
7. Scott Burns Quartet at Andy's Jazz Club, Chicago, June 25 — All About Jazz
8. 2nd Set With Tenor Time — Andy's Jazz Club