Jim Gailloreto

Rooted in modern post-bop, Jim Gailloreto has been active on the Chicago jazz and creative music scene since the 1980s. A prolific composer and arranger he has eight recordings as a leader to his credit with three instrumentally diverse groups, and has recorded as a sideman with several notable artists and record labels. Chicagojazz.com describes Gailloreto's compositions as "genre bending".^[4]

On his Jazzformation and The Insider recordings, Gailloreto's tenor saxophone is heard with a more conventional small jazz ensemble of guitar, piano, bass, and drums while his Jazz String Quintet recordings feature his soprano sax improvisations backed by a string quintet. Each of these string quintet recordings features standout compositions by Gailloreto along with guest singers Kurt Elling, Patricia Barber, and Cheryl Wilson. Gailloreto's tenor sax also leads the Metropolitan Jazz Octet having taken the reins from Tom Hilliard, his former professor at DePaul University, 57 years after the group was founded. Hilliard left Gailloreto the group's music library when his health began to fail. The music sat in Gailloreto's basement for years before he resurrected the MJO in 2014.^[5] The octet format of the MJO features a small big band, a standard jazz rhythm section of piano, bass, and drums with alto, tenor, and baritone saxophones, trumpet, and trombone. Gailloreto along with saxophonist John Kornegay added charts to the library, which was largely written by Hilliard from the 1950s through the 1980s, and recorded the first new MJO recording The Road to Your Place in 2018.

Chameleon-like as a player, Gailloreto is equally at home performing jazz, blues, fusion, funk, classical, and Latin. He's performed and recorded for singers Patricia Barber and Kurt Elling on Blue Note Records, performed the Chicago premier of Marc Anthony Turnage's Scorched with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and John Scofield,^[6] recorded with New York Latinjazz vibraphonist Mike Freeman, guitarist John McLean, pianists Jeremy Kahn and Fred Simon, and vocalist Grazyna Auguscik. Gailloreto has performed five times at the Chicago Jazz Festival with various ensembles.^[7]

Gailloreto graduated DePaul University in 1981 with a bachelor's degree in music composition having studied with George Flynn, and received a master's degree in music composition from Northwestern University in 1983 having studied with Alan Stout. He's a recipient of the New Works: Creation & Presentation Program Grant from Chamber Music America and was recognized in Jazziz Magazine's Woodwinds on Fire jazz select disc.

Gailloreto is an associate professor of music at Roosevelt University's Chicago College of Performing Arts.^[1]

• Metropolitan Jazz Octet The Bowie Project featuring Paul Marinaro, 2023, Origin Records
• Metropolitan Jazz Octet It's Too Hot For Words featuring Dee Alexander, 2019, Delmark Records
• Metropolitan Jazz Octet The Road to Your Place, 2018
• Jim Gailloreto's Jazz String Quintet Pythiad featuring Cheryl Wilson, 2017
• Jim Gailloreto, Jazzformation, self-produced, 2012
• Jim Gailloreto Jazz String Quintet American Complex featuring Patricia Barber, Origin Classical, 2010
• Jim Gailloreto's Jazz String Quintet featuring Kurt Elling, Naim label, 2006
• Jim Gailloreto, The Insider, Wide Sound, 2003

• Kurt Elling, The Beautiful Day, OKeh/Sony, 2016
• Mike Freeman ZonaVibe, Blue Tjade, VOF, 2015
• Mike Freeman ZonaVibe, The Vibesman, VOF, 2012
• Alison Ruble, Ashland, Origin, 2010
• John McLean, Better Angels, Origin, 2007
• Patricia Barber, Mythologies, Blue Note Records, 2006
• John Moulder, Trinity, Origin, 2005
• Jeremy Kahn, Most of a Nickel, 2005
• Grazyna Auguscik, Lulajze, 2005
• Kurt Elling, Man in the Air, Blue Note Records, 2003
• Fred Simon, Open Book, Columbia, 1991
• Kelly Brand, A Dream in a Stone, KOCH Jazz, 1995

• Kurt Elling, Dedicated To You, 2009 - *Grammy Award Winner