Madison, WI 53703
USA
Madison-based composer, trumpeter and educator Paul Dietrich creates original music that strives to combine the diverse aesthetics of modern and classic jazz, Western classical music, various world and folk musics, progressive rock, and more.
The Chicago-based Paul Dietrich Quintet was formed in 2012 as a vehicle for its leader’s small group writing and maintains an active performance schedule in Chicago and throughout the Midwest. The group has released two albums. Focus, released in 2017 on ears&eyes Records, was called “refreshingly unique” and “captivating” by the Chicago Jazz Magazine, and led stereogum.com to describe the band as “masters of modern jazz as a language.” The group’s debut album, We Always Get There, was released in 2014 on Blujazz, and prompted allaboutjazz.com to state in a four-star review that with “this superbly imaginative and cohesive recording, Dietrich proves himself an apt bandleader, an exceptional composer and a superlative performer.”
The Quintet’s lineup, unchanged since its inception, includes some of the best young talent in the Chicago area: saxophonist Dustin Laurenzi, pianist Paul Bedal, bassist Tim Ipsen and drummer Andrew Green.
Lately, Dietrich has been earning acclaim as a composer. His first album of modern jazz big band music, Forward, was released in March 2019, and hailed as “the most significant new orchestral jazz to emerge from the Midwest in quite a while” by former Milwaukee Journal reviewer Kevin Lynch. Paul has completed commissioned works for the Isthmus Jazz Festival and for area high schools and colleges, including UW-Madison, Lawrence University, Madison College, Ripon College, Cambridge High School, Grafton High School, and James Madison Memorial High School.
