Best of Chicago 2020: Culture/Nightlife

Newcity

Edited by Scoop Jackson & Tara Betts

Editors’ Letter

We are looking at Chicago long after Jean Baptiste DuSable witnessed this land, long after the Great Migration fanned out from train stations to Chicago’s South and West Sides, and almost a century after Robert Johnson’s rendition of “Sweet Home Chicago” became a citywide anthem played on televised events to celebrate this city’s rich cultural and historic heritage, long after the 1919 Red Summer that set the uncomfortable stage for the city’s racial divide and dynamics that, to this day, still exist.

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The Hyde Park Jazz Festival takes it to the streets

Chicago Reader

By Bill Meyer

When the Hyde Park Jazz Festival's executive and artistic director, Kate Dumbleton, spoke to the Reader in August about the fest's efforts to adapt to COVID-19, she sounded hopeful that some version of the event would take place during its traditional time slot on the last weekend of September. Given that Chicago's Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events had already replaced an entire season of live outdoor programming with prerecorded video broadcasts—and that no one knew if, when, and how hard a second wave of COVID infections would hit the city—that hope seemed wildly optimistic. But the virus held off, and the festival did hold events both its usual days.

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Hyde Park Jazz Festival creates connection despite social distancing

Hyde Park Herald

By Mrinalini Pandey, contributing writer

Over the weekend, Hyde Park residents and visitors welcomed the 14th annual Hyde Park Jazz Festival with great fervor.

Unlike its conventional format, this year’s event took place as a mix of live-streamed concerts on Saturday evening, and pop-up and mobile staged performances throughout Sunday at various outdoor locations in the neighborhood.

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Review: Hyde Park Jazz Festival makes a mighty impact online

Chicago Tribune

By Howard Reich

No, it wasn’t quite the same as spending a day running around Hyde Park catching jazz sets in concert halls, courtyards, churches and whatnot.

But the folks who stage the annual Hyde Park Jazz Festival weren’t going to let the pandemic derail the 14th annual event. So the two-day soirée opened Saturday with a series of stylistically wide-ranging shows livestreamed from the University of Chicago’s Logan Center for the Arts.

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Chicago’s September jazz festivals cope with COVID

Chicago Reader

By Bill Meyer

The Hyde Park Jazz Festival, which in recent years has become a world-class event in its own right, hasn't been flat-out canceled, but COVID-19 and its accompanying economic punishment have forced its organizers to radically reimagine its programming. They've also had to adopt a white-knuckled, wait-and-see approach to deciding what they'll actually do on the ground—an enervating state of irresolution that will be familiar to the parents, teachers, and administrators who've just spent the summer wondering where and how the kids will get their schooling.

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