Matt Riggen

Taking a little moment before I hop in the car again to reflect on a beautiful and surreal experience: I was lucky enough to grow up in a zip code that allowed me to take part in the Avon public school system. Basically you and all your cohort would start kindergarten together and stay in the same school up till you graduated high school. It was even more intense if you opted into Avon's band program in 6th grade, because you would be part of an even smaller cohort of kids who then would go and win concert band and marching band championships every single year together, owing to the excellent instructors available to you. I walked away from a lot of that when I turned 18--and even while I was there, I was working on some Other Stuff. Not just jazz, but starting to become more avant-garde, compose my own work et cetera. Basically not bad things, but certainly not something Avon had the time or desire to divert and include. So fast forward 15-20 years and my old friend Candace Boone approaches me at Midwest Clinic. She knows I play jazz and I am serious about it etc, and do I want to come clinic and perform with her kids in May at the Lebanon School District where she teaches? I would have run through a brick wall to do it. I just got back--and beyond the completely lovely experience of seeing Candace in her element and being so happy with how those kids played, I have experienced a homecoming I never thought possible. Staying with the guy I was best man for and seeing myself in his wedding pictures, getting to catch up with the person who started me on trumpet when I was 12--and critically, having my weird vagaries and outside research into learning to be a new kind of musician be deeply appreciated and uplifted in a way that they certainly were not 15 years ago. I am not sure many people get a chance to "go home" this hard and be treated so well after a long absence, and I am so excited that Candace asked me and I got to say yes. I really struggled musically and personally at home, and to return with more figured out after years and be celebrated for it has been a phenomenal gift.

Living With Tollways is kicking off a month of May performances live on the radio this Thursday at 10pm. We're off to see the @wzrdchicago on 88.3FM in support of the release of "Eponymously Titled", which is officially dropping on Bandcamp this Friday via Signbearer Records. Tune into Midwest free jazz from the comfort of your own home/car.

I would feel conflicted presenting a straight-up Star-Spangled Banner right now after the fall and winter of ICE in Chicago but I would block some major opportunities for the kids and program if I didn't. Fortunately there are a lot of models for rendering the requisite complexity that doing this national hymn sort of demands. Ives' "Variations on 'America'" and John Clayton's Super Bowl arrangement for Whitney Houston served as potent inspirations (and are clearly copied in several parts if you have ears to hear them), and let me get the Saxophone Quartet out on the diamond in a way that I felt OK about. I will probably write other variations on this because the Quartet played this great and it will be good to have a response to the 250th. In the meantime, like always, I will think about this poem a lot: Ghazal: America the Beautiful Alicia Ostriker Do you remember our earnestness our sincerity in first grade when we learned to sing America The Beautiful along with the Star-Spangled Banner and say the Pledge of Allegiance to America We put our hands over our first grade hearts we felt proud to be citizens of America I said One Nation Invisible until corrected maybe I was right about America School days school days dear old Golden Rule Days when we learned how to behave in America What to wear, how to smoke, how to despise our parents who didn’t understand us or America Only later learning the Banner and the Beautiful live on opposite sides of the street in America Only later discovering the Nation is divisible by money by power by color by gender by sex America We comprehend it now this land is two lands one triumphant bully one still hopeful America Imagining amber waves of grain blowing in the wind purple mountains and no homeless in America Sometimes I still put my hand tenderly on my heart somehow or other still carried away by America

Without putting it lightly, I have survived International Jazz Day. I have made a broad and consistent choice to sort of work on the margins or to bring the artform to people and into rooms that normally would not have it. But the big thrill over the last week or so was reconnecting with dozens of my friends across multiple days, getting a chance to talk about *our* shared mentors, and to all huddle up around a shared fire. On Tuesday, I really had to go hard. It was the thrill of a lifetime to bring the Hancock Fellows into Marquette Park--having them play on a stage which I have fought hard to be refurbished, on instruments I use to teach my students, FOR my students and their families. Undeniable proof that Marquette Park can support world-class acts and allow them to thrive in front of appreciative intelligent audiences well away from the standard seats of culture in Chicago. It was especially lovely to have legendary jazz educator and fellow David Baker mentee JB Dyas come and check out the show. If you labor really hard in obscurity for a really long time, sometimes your heroes will show up right in your house. Immediately after I packed those same instruments and went to run the Frē Jam. I got a chance to construct that sense of community all over again: being funny on the mic, presenting high-level improvised music, and critically inviting people onto stage with each other hoping that they would bond musically and being elated when they did. Getting to welcome Andy Farber, who straightened out my large ensemble writing and who directly laid the pathway for me to start a Composer's Workshop here in Chicago--and seeing him get a beautiful moment as his "Usonian Structures" suite was played at Unity Temple for Herbie Hancock--was gorgeous. I have not seen Andy in 6 years and so to have him in and close out a Bridgeport dumpling spot with him was so special. And the final show last night (with the AACM and Robert Glasper both playing the most daring sets of the evening) really sent it home. Knowing that the city was really welcoming Herbie in and hearing him express as much made me cry. I am so stoked to continue doing the coolest thing ever!!!

Tomorrow The Frē Jam is BACK at @lemon_chicago at 7:30 Jamming till 11:30 See you then 🥳🚀💪🏽 @realhasanicannon @fallingflowerarts @calculated_discomfort @mattriggen #jazz #jazzjam #chicagojazz #free #freedom

A normal amount of notes in a perfectly idiomatic bass solo over "Four on Six" last night with Surfin Bird. My Gallery Cabaret debut!! What a cool space.

Next up the incredibly multifaceted instrumentalist Matt Riggen is gonna grace the bandstand on bass Tuesday April 28th @lemon_chicago Matt Riggen is a composer, educator, and multi-instrumentalist. Before moving to Chicago, Matt was awarded the ELU from France’s CitizenJazz in 2016 and 2018 for co-led projects and wrote liberally for the critically acclaimed Sean Imboden Large Ensemble. Since arriving in Chicago, he has quietly built one of Chicago’s most vital incubators for emerging creative musicians across a plurality of South Side jazz education initiatives while simultaneously cultivating a distinctive voice as a performer. Matt’s capacity as an instrumentalist is uncategorizably and uncharacteristically broad. He has played upright bass at the World Expo in Dubai, toured on trumpet with Durand Jones and the Indications, and has also recorded/performed professionally on saxophone, bass clarinet, trombone, piano, and drumset. His bandleading and teaching emphasizes stylistic breadth, improvisational fluency, and a non-dogmatic musical worldview that produces successful ensembles of every age and experience level imaginable across traditional, avant-garde, and hybrid performance settings. In both scope and cultural impact, Riggen’s work recalls the legacy of legendary Chicago music educator Walter Dyett, whose mentorship helped shape generations of the city’s most respected artists. #chicago #jazz #chicagomusic #electricbass #uprightbass

Humbled and relieved to finally get @pomaronate and I's "Ourselves When We're Real" out into the world on @signbearerrecords . Really happy we were able to get in with @skylark_chicago to give it a proper release in front of people and joyful to get to do it with a full band. I allowed myself one drum solo and it was on Miracles. "Growing was difficult, everything tried to stop them No special nutrients, garbage and chemicals dumped all around them That don't mean that plants can't grow out the side cracks of houses Or where water droughts are the toughest It's a low chance sure, but it still happens"

BIG NEWS: the 2027 Herbie Hancock Fellows are coming to Marquette Park on 4/28 for International Jazz Day. From the press: Join the Marquette Park Cultural Center for a free concert! In fall 2025, six extraordinary young jazz musicians from around the world were selected for the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz Performance at UCLA, Class of 2027. These excellent players study deeply as individuals and as a small group—receiving personal mentoring, ensemble coaching, and lectures on the jazz tradition from the legends of the jazz tradition. Beyond that, they are charged to experiment in expanding jazz in new directions through their compositions and performances. Herbie Hancock Fellows have performed in Saint Petersburg, Russia; Havana, Cuba; Melbourne, Sydney and Mt. Gambier, Australia; at the celebration commemorating the 40th anniversary of the coronation of the King of Thailand, the 1998 Summit of the Americas in Chile before 34 heads of state, the United Nations “Day of Philosophy” event in Paris sponsored by UNESCO, and the Tokyo Jazz Festival. The students have also participated in tours of Argentina, China, Egypt, India, Morocco, Peru, Russia, Vietnam and, most recently, Jordan with Institute Chairman Herbie Hancock. These musicians’ concepts and playing will come to define the sound of jazz well into the future. Come get an early glimpse into what that jazz will sound like. The Hancock Fellows will come to the Marquette Park Cultural Center on April 28th at 4:30 for a free show in its historic auditorium. This unprecedented performance has come to the Southwest Side as a part of International Jazz Day celebrations, hosted this year by the City of Chicago. Free admission! Nicolaus Gelin: trumpet Nathan Gilbreath: trombone Mwanzi Harriott: guitar Yerin Kim: bass Elisee Ngbo: piano Mailo Rakotonanahary: drums

New Marquette Park release on Inferno!! Check the link in my bio to hear the album. BALLADS FOR THREE (2021) Recorded in the height of the pandemic off a single carefully-placed Blue Yeti podcast microphone, “Ballads For Three (2021)” captures an extremely specific moment in Marquette Park Music Program history. Faced with the most intense DIY conditions possible, the music program director and two dedicated program members masked up in February 2021 and entered a completely empty space to make music despite the conditions at home and abroad. Owing a lot to some of the intense yet completely open ballads recorded for ECM (in particular, the Billy Hart Quartet’s reading of “Some Enchanted Evening”), this trio eschewed long solos in favor of creating an inimitable atmosphere. Most of these readings are just the melodies, taken at an unhurried pace and focused completely on giving each line the thought it deserved. Fervent, concentrated actions during the day gave way to these sensitive and quiet readings of four jazz standards, the music of Ornette Coleman, and a long minimalist take on Earl Sweatshirt’s “Chum”. The music can be heard as a counterpoint to the historical period in it was made—in the heart of chaos, three musicians could still take the time and come together to make a moment of gentleness and introspection. Matt Riggen: piano, trumpet, audio engineer, mixing & mastering Beto Alegria: upright bass Kevin Almazan: drumset Recorded in February 2021

OURSELVES WHEN WE'RE REAL is out today on Bandcamp and streaming!! Go check it out where you get your music--and come through the 4/19 release show at Skylark (@skylark_chicago ) featuring a full band!! ------------------------- original poetry accompanied by improvised piano in real-time text painting --and-- the art of being a human in a world of chaos while living in the concretes of life going through the motions full of love while grieving through it all   credits released April 10, 2026 Ron Torres: spoken word Matt Riggen: piano Recorded by Doug Malone at Jamdek Studios in 2024-2025 Mixed/mastered by Randy Trubitt

Signbearer month 1!! Ourselves When We're Real: April 10 Play It Where It Lies: April 24