Background
BA, Lake Forest College
Mr. McDonough comes to jazz history through a career in music journalism. After graduating with a B.A. in history from Lake Forest College in 1964, he joined the Chicago Tribune in 1967 and has been a regular contributor to Down Beat Magazine beginning in 1968. He also wrote regularly for 25 years about jazz and film for The Wall Street Journal, and contributed frequently to Chamber Music Magazine. Mr. McDonough is a three-time Grammy Award nominee for album note books on Lester Young, Pee Wee Russell and Benny Goodman, and participated as album note writer in the Grammy-winning box set, The Complete Ella Fitzgerald Song Books in 1994. He received the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for music journalism in 2006, and has written and produced many essays on jazz history for NPR’s All Things Considered. Mr. McDonough has reviewed and interviewed many of the major figurers in jazz history, including Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Sonny Rollins, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Davis, Buddy Rich, John Coltrane, Ella Fitzgerald, Lionel Hampton, Benny Golson, Gene Krupa, Oscar Peterson, Max Roach, Coleman Hawkins, Cecil Taylor, Dizzy Gillespie, Bill Evans and more. He has been part of the Northwestern Jazz Studies faculty since 2009.