The Hyde Park Jazz Festival is more ambitious and inclusive than ever
By Bill Meyer
September 20, 2019
The happy paradox of the Hyde Park Jazz Festival is that while it was instituted to celebrate the jazz legacy of Chicago’s south side, its programming puts it on par with great jazz festivals around the globe. It commissions new projects from rising local musicians. This year one of those works is Requiem for Jazz by Angel Bat Dawid, a 12-part multimedia jazz funeral that responds to the 1959 film The Cry of Jazz by Chicago-born filmmaker Edward Bland and draws on the tradition of hush harbors (secret religious services where slaves practiced their own rituals); another The Story of 400 Years, a sonic narrative of African American history by Isaiah Collier & the Chosen Few. The festival also hosts new-to-us stuff by out-of-towners, such as trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire and his killer new trio with pianist Kris Davis and drummer Nasheet Waits. But it also doesn’t neglect, say, vocalist Maggie Brown and other reliable favorites of the picnic-on-the-Midway crowd.