Jazz Fest hits all the right notes
September 28, 2026
By James Porter, contributing writer
Photo by Spencer Bibbs
The Hyde Park Jazz Festival, in existence since 2007, has been a welcome repository of a wide variety of jazz sounds. This year was no exception.
Whether you are sorry to see the summer go, or enthusiastically waiting for the fall, the musicians heard on the Midway provided an excellent soundtrack. Orbert Davis exemplified this on the Wagner stage Saturday, gliding through Miles Davis' arrangement of Michael Jackson's "Human Nature," which quickly morphed into a furious bop improvisation. Acknowledging a standard while using it as a springboard for other ideas represents the spontaneous nature of jazz.
