Brett Dean - Bandleader Shout Section Big Band

Shout Section Big Band is one of Chicago’s most jubilant and hard-swinging large ensembles, an 18-piece powerhouse led by trumpeter, educator, and bandleader Brett T. Dean. Formed in Chicago in 2007, the band has built its reputation on brassy precision, dance-floor propulsion, and a rare ability to make vintage swing feel freshly combustible rather than merely nostalgic. The band’s own site notes major credits including Chicago television, worldwide radio play, The Vampire Diaries, and a 1940s swing performance for Amazon Prime’s A League of Their Own, while also highlighting its residencies at Andy’s Jazz Club and Fitzgerald’s Nightclub.  Shout Section’s public calendar and outside venue listings further show the band’s continuing presence in the Chicago scene, including current Andy’s Jazz Club sets and suburban swing-dance engagements.  Whether on a concert stage, in a jazz club, at a civic series, or driving a room full of Lindy hoppers, Shout Section projects the exhilarating impression of a band that knows the Basie/Sinatra grammar cold but refuses to let it sit politely behind glass.

The group’s newest chapter has been especially strong with vocalist Tatum Langley, whose collaboration with the band on Tatum’s Swingin’ Session!!! has given Shout Section a gleaming, old-school-meets-now calling card. The album was released September 10, 2025, and is available on CD, vinyl, and streaming platforms, with Apple Music listing the project as a 13-song 2025 jazz release by Shout Section Big Band and Tatum Langley.  Press describes the record as a “fiercely swingin’” meeting of American Songbook material with swinging takes on the Beatles, Peggy Lee, and more, consciously nodding to Sinatra’s classic Swingin’ Session!!! while presenting the band’s own muscular Chicago identity.  Additional reviewers have been strikingly effusive: Making A Scene calls Shout Section one of Chicago’s premier big bands and praises Dean as a world-class trumpeter, arranger, and educator, while Stage and Cinema describes the album as brassy, polished, reverently vintage, and vividly alive.  In short, Shout Section Big Band stands today as a fully loaded, crowd-igniting, top-shelf Chicago swing orchestra: steeped in tradition, staffed with formidable musicians, and plainly determined to make big band music sound not like a museum piece, but like a glorious machine with the throttle wide open.

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