Chad McCullough
Watch As The Echo Falls
Newly released, Watch as the Echo Falls is the second album from Atlantic Road Trip — the international trio of trumpeter Chad McCullough, saxophonist Paul Towndrow, and vibraphonist Miro Herak. Where the group’s debut, ONE, announced a collective voice rooted in folk melody and open improvisation, this new recording moves deeper into atmosphere and narrative space — patient, immersive, and quietly ambitious. Recorded in The Netherlands, and released on Calligram Records, the album draws from Celtic, Balkan, and chamber jazz traditions without settling into any one of them, charting its own unhurried course through tone and texture. The trio has spent years refining this language with multiple international tours and large-scale collaborative works, and Watch as the Echo Falls is the clearest document yet of what that shared vocabulary sounds like at its most fully realized.
About Chad
Chad McCullough is a Chicago-based trumpeter, composer, and bandleader. He was named Rising Star Trumpeter of the Year in the 2025 DownBeat Magazine Critics Poll, and has been recognized by DownBeat for his “stunning, chilled lyricism and compositional acuity” — a voice that, as writer Dan McClenaghan observed, renders “each note sound as if it were imbued with a deeper meaning.”
McCullough is a co-founder of Calligram Records and a member of the jazz faculty at DePaul University. His most recent album as a leader, Transverse (2025), was named Runner-Up for Best Jazz Album by the International Trumpet Guild. Its predecessor, In These Hills, Beyond (2024), was described by All About Jazz as representing “the best playing of his career.”
He is a founding member of Atlantic Road Trip — the internationally active trio with saxophonist Paul Towndrow and vibraphonist Miro Herak — whose latest release, Watch as the Echo Falls (Calligram Records, 2026), navigates world music, folk, and chamber jazz with equal command. The ensemble has performed across nine countries and created large-scale original works, including Over Mountain, Under Sky for big band and orchestra.
His seventeen-year collaboration with Belgian pianist Bram Weijters represents one of the most sustained partnerships in contemporary jazz — encompassing more than 200 concerts and five albums to consistent international critical acclaim.
McCullough has served as trumpeter and conductor on seven albums with Japanese post-rock ensemble MONO, and as Music Director for their 2024 world tour across 21 countries. In 2026, he composed and conducted orchestral arrangements for the landmark tenth anniversary performance of Departure Songs by We Lost the Sea at the Dunk! Festival in Belgium. His cross-cultural work extends further through an ongoing collaboration with Bosnian sevdah master Damir Imamović — one of the foremost figures in Balkan roots music — with whom he has toured the United States.
McCullough has performed at the Festival of New Trumpet Music, the Chicago Jazz Festival, the Earshot Jazz Festival, the Halifax Jazz Festival, and the Jazzenic Festival, as well as venues throughout Europe, Russia, and the Balkans. He has appeared alongside Maria Schneider, Dave Douglas, Steve Coleman, Jon Irabagon, Kendrick Scott, Miguel Zenón, Ambrose Akinmusire, and Avishai Cohen, among others. He is an AR Resonance Performing Artist.
Bram Weijters & Chad McCullough Duo
Bram Weijters & Chad McCullough Duo
Different But The Same / from the album FEATHER