The Hyde Park Jazz Festival is one of the best-programmed events of its kind anywhere, thanks to the resilient and resourceful people, many of them volunteers, who organize and coordinate it. It’s also one of the most frustrating, because there’s so much good stuff to see that schedule clashes are inevitable—especially on Saturday, when 31 […]
Tag: Hyde Park Jazz Festival
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The Hyde Park Jazz Festival’s richly varied program opens doors to musical growth with new alliances
The Hyde Park Jazz Festival may bear the name of a single neighborhood, but it’s a world-class event. The programming draws heavily from local talent, but Chicagoans such as saxophonist Ari Brown and vocalist Dee Alexander have earned international profiles. And the performers from elsewhere include the likes of Detroit drummer Louis Hayes and Philadelphia […]
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The Hyde Park Jazz Festival returns to full flower
The Hyde Park Jazz Festival defied the pandemic with ingenious safety accommodations in 2020, presenting 18 brief pop-up concerts in parks, pedways, and sidewalks between 40th and 61st Streets, all announced at the last minute to minimize crowding. Last year the festival strived for a return to normalcy and almost got there, booking a slightly […]
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The Hyde Park Jazz Festival connects the south side to the wider world of jazz
Hard times will bring out anyone’s true colors, and the Hyde Park Jazz Festival certainly showed what it was made of when COVID-19 brought live music to a halt in 2020. Its organizers emulated the music that the festival supports, improvising ways to support local jazz. First, they arranged the Jazz Postcards series, small-scale outdoor […]
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Back Alley Jazz renews a south-side tradition
In 2018, Back Alley Jazz, an offshoot of the Hyde Park Jazz Festival, thrummed the heartstrings of nostalgic south-siders when it resuscitated the popular neighborhood-alley jams that took place in the community from the mid-1960s into the ’70s. Since then, this riff on tradition has become a tradition itself, turning unassuming corridors and street corners […]
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The ‘new normal’ hangs over another summer of live music
It’s music festival season again, and of course we’re still in the middle of a pandemic. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 222.3 million U.S. residents are fully vaccinated against COVID-19—roughly 67 percent of the population. Vaccination is a great safeguard against serious illness or death, but it’s less effective against infection […]
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Chicago’s Black musical visionaries charted paths for their communities in the 1950s and ’60s
Since the 1950s, Chicago has hosted a succession of visionary Black musical groups and societies. They’re best known as purveyors of avant-garde jazz, but that characterization sells short Sun Ra and his Arkestra, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), and Phil Cohran’s Artistic Heritage Ensemble. Each was—and in some cases still is—a […]
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The Hyde Park Jazz Festival takes a step back toward normalcy
The 15th Hyde Park Jazz Festival, which took place last Saturday and Sunday, may have been the best ever. That’s a tall statement, given how many great ones there have been—but it’s less about ranking favorites and more about how good it felt to see such a beloved event getting back to its old self. […]
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Ensemble dal Niente and Ken Vandermark explore the ties between chamber music and jazz
Ensemble dal Niente commissions and selects new music that earns the designation “new” not just because it’s freshly composed; it also challenges both players and audiences to experience performance in new ways. This program, jointly presented by Ear Taxi and the Hyde Park Jazz Festival, draws on the resources of Chicago in two ways. First, […]
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Jumaane Taylor, tap dancer
“I’ve been on this journey to be able to present within the jazz community. . . . To be a union of creative beauty.”
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The Hyde Park Jazz Festival takes it to the streets
With short sets from small groups in unexpected spots, the Hyde Park Jazz Festival creates a communal experience that’s pandemic safe.
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Chicago’s September jazz festivals cope with COVID
The city is replacing the Chicago Jazz Festival with a slimmed-down online event, while the smaller, nimbler Hyde Park Jazz Festival plans to try pop-up in-person shows.
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Olivia Junell, codirector of Experimental Sound Studio
“Right before the shelter-in-place got announced, we started thinking: OK, how can we help?”
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Curator Adia Sykes on a voice that takes you back to the golden age of soul
Current musical obsessions of ESS codirector Olivia Junell, curator Adia Sykes, and Reader music editor Philip Montoro
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Photos: The Hyde Park Jazz Festival
The south side’s own world-class jazz fest played host to dozens of shows and more than a hundred musicians.