Latest release: Atlantic Road Trip
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 has been named a Rising Star Trumpeter in the DownBeat Critics Poll in both 2025 and 2026, and a Rising Star Producer in 2026. DownBeat has praised his “stunning, chilled lyricism, and compositional acuity,” and the Chicago Tribune has described him as having “a remarkable lyrical gift.” Critic Dan McClenaghan has written that he renders “each note to sound as if it were imbued with a deeper meaning.”
His album Charm of Impossibilities (2023) won a Silver medal from the International Trumpet Guild. Of its follow-up, In These Hills, Beyond (2024), All About Jazz wrote that McCullough “does some of the best trumpet playing of his career.” McCullough co-founded Calligram Records. He teaches on the jazz faculty at DePaul University.
McCullough is known for long-term collaborations. His partnership with Belgian pianist Bram Weijters spans seventeen years and five albums. He has recorded seven albums as trumpeter, arranger, and conductor with Japanese post-rock ensemble MONO, and led their 2024 world tour as Music Director across 21 countries. He tours the U.S. with Bosnian sevdah master Damir Imamović. In 2025 he released Transverse, recorded with musicians from Macedonia; a follow-up is now underway. And in 2026, he composed and conducted the orchestral arrangements for the tenth-anniversary performance of Departure Songs by We Lost the Sea at the Dunk!Festival in Belgium.
He is a founding member of Atlantic Road Trip, a trio with saxophonist Paul Towndrow and vibraphonist Miro Herak. Their albums include ONE (2023) and Watch as the Echo Falls (Calligram, 2026). DownBeat’s Martin Longley wrote that the latter’s compositions are “invested with a sense of joyous optimism and appreciation of existence.” The trio has toured nine countries and premiered large-scale works, including Over Mountain, Under Sky for big band and orchestra.
He has performed at the Chicago Jazz Festival and the Festival of New Trumpet Music, and throughout Europe, Asia, and the Balkans. He has performed with Maria Schneider, Queens of the Stone Age, Steve Coleman, Jon Irabagon, Kendrick Scott, Miguel Zenón, Ambrose Akinmusire, and Avishai Cohen. He is an AR Resonance Performing Artist and uses Best Brass and Morningstar Mutes.
Bram Weijters & Chad McCullough Duo
Bram Weijters & Chad McCullough Duo
Different But The Same / from the album FEATHER