The Chicago Soul Jazz Collective to Release New Album “No Wind & No Rain” on April 10th, 2026 | LISTEN!
The Chicago Soul Jazz Collective to Release New Album “No Wind & No Rain”
The Chicago Soul Jazz Collective returns with No Wind & No Rain, their fourth album and most fully realized artistic statement to date. The album will be released by Calligram Records on limited-edition vinyl, CD, and digitally on Friday, April 10.
A seven-piece ensemble led by saxophonist John Fournier and featuring the acclaimed vocalist Dee Alexander, The Chicago Soul Jazz Collective has spent years seeking that elusive sweet spot where Chicago soul and jazz converge with blues, gospel, and folk to create a sound that echoes the history of music in the Windy City.
Under the expert production of guitarist Larry Brown Jr., they’ve crafted a record that is as sophisticated as it is gritty and as gripping as it is grooving—just like the city they call home.
The ensemble’s journey began in 2017 when Fournier, feeling lost and seeking comfort, returned to the records that first inspired him as a young musician—albums by Ramsey Lewis, The Crusaders, Horace Silver, Cannonball Adderley, Eddie Harris, and Les McCann.
“I was listening to records I had not heard in years but which were my initial inspirations,” reflects Fournier. “I found this music had an underlying sheer joy which made me feel great. I figured that if listening to them made me feel great, then playing them live would make me feel even better.”
What started as a modest Wednesday night residency at the venue WIRE in Berwyn, Illinois, quickly became something more significant. By the second performance, the club was packed, and CSJC has been playing to full houses ever since.
Their debut recording, 2018’s Soulophone, a live album of classic soul/jazz tunes, was initially pressed in limited quantities to sell at shows. Somehow, jazz stations across the country discovered the record, and it became one of the top jazz releases that year.
Emboldened, the ensemble pivoted to original material with 2020’s It Takes a Spark to Start a Fire, featuring guest artists Nicholas Payton and Raul Midon.
When the great Chicago jazz vocalist Dee Alexander joined the collective a couple years later, everything changed. With Alexander’s incredible ability to deliver a song, CSJC created On the Way to Be Free (2022), a critically acclaimed record that brought them to major festivals including Chicago Jazz Fest and Hyde Park Jazz Fest, and established them as regulars at world-class venues like The Jazz Showcase and Winter’s Jazz Club.
No Wind & No Rain represents the culmination of this artistic evolution. The album’s theme is perseverance, best captured in the lyric “They can’t make no wind strong enough to blow my castle down.”
“We acknowledge that we are living in difficult times,” explains Fournier. “However, Chicago soul and jazz and the city it comes from are too strong to be held down, and our music and our spirit will always prevail. In this way, No Wind & No Rain is a reminder through music to us all that we are more than we seem; we have faced difficult tasks before, and if we stick together with faith and hope we will emerge stronger for the new day.”
The album opens with “The Laughing Heart,” a high-energy, infectious funky blues instrumental that gives the band a chance to stretch out and introduce themselves before bringing up the vocalist. Fournier and Brown tear it up before a drum and organ breakdown. The connection between bassist Micah Collier and drummer/organist Keith Brooks II is skin-tight across the opening track (and the entire album).
The Chicago Soul Jazz Collective, featuring Dee Alexander on vocals, will celebrate the release of No Wind & No Rain with back to back shows at Winter’s Jazz Club in Chicago on Saturday, April 18 and Sunday, April 19: