Chicago’s September jazz festivals cope with COVID
The city is replacing its traditional huge outdoor affair with a slimmed-down online event, while the smaller, nimbler Hyde Park Jazz Festival plans to try pop-up in-person shows.
By Bill Meyer
August 27, 2020
John Corbett's introduction to the Reader's overview of the 2019 Chicago Jazz Festival began: “An old pair of shoes, the United States Postal Service, a loving spouse—when things have been around awhile, it's all too easy to take them for granted. The Chicago Jazz Festival has been with us for more than four decades.” With any luck your favorite footwear is holding up—and your relationship too, if you've got one—because 2020 has been hell on the other two. The USPS is under assault by the executive branch of the federal government, and on June 9 the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by finally canceling the city's remaining summer festivals—including the 2020 Chicago Jazz Festival.
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.