The Hyde Park Jazz Festival takes a step back toward normalcy
Photos from the city’s most ambitious neighborhood festival, which returned to the Midway Plaisance for 2021
September 30, 2021
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.
Last year’s HPJF was one of the most ingenious pandemic pivots in Chicago’s otherwise bleak cultural calendar. Artistic director Kate Dumbleton and her staff came up with the idea of presenting last-minute pop-up gigs at parks, underpasses, and other unusual outdoor spaces—by building in an element of surprise, they could prevent audiences from congregating excessively (and unsafely) during the plague.