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.
Chicago Jazz Festival
Thu 8/29, 11 AM-4:30 PM and 6:30-9 PM; Fri 8/30-Sun 9/1, 11 AM-9 PM Thu in Millennium Park (Michigan and Randolph) and the Chicago Cultural Center (78 E. Washington), Fri-Sun in Millennium Park,jazzinchicago.org, free, all ages
Many similar events stumble when it comes to sound quality, but the Chicago Jazz Festival is uniformly excellent on that score. The lakefront setting couldn’t be more picturesque, and since the fest moved to Millennium Park in 2017, it’s perfected the side-stage situation—what used to feel almost like a street fair is now a proper setting to hear such great music. And this year the city’s strong slate of satellite shows (which starts the Friday before the fest) is better distributed around Chicago, especially on the south side, thanks to a diversity of partnerships on the ground. North-side mainstays Constellation and Elastic Arts are joined by the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, Ernest Dawkins’s Live the Spirit Residency, Transition East, the South Side Jazz Coalition, and the late Fred Anderson’s Birdhouse nonprofit.
The bandleader and drummer assembles an ensemble of composer-performers from The City Was Yellow, a “real book” documenting 30 years of the city’s jazz scene.
by Bill Meyer
