the 2025 Hyde park jazz festival benefit & concert

june 26, 2025

The 19th Annual Hyde Park Jazz Festival Benefit and Concert is on Thursday, June 25, 2025 at The Promontory. We hope to have a packed house to kick off the 2025 Festival season and honor three extraordinary contributors to Chicago jazz and culture on the South Side, Ava & Isaac Stanley and Marc Monaghan. The annual benefit helps keep the Festival free for everyone, and the generosity and commitment of our jazz-loving community are essential to the Festival's continued growth and success each year. The Hyde Park Jazz Festival is a 501c3 organization. We are so grateful for your support.

Schedule:

6:00pm-7:30pm: Reception and Honoree Celebration

7:30pm-8:30pm: Performance by Pharez Whitted Quintet

Honoring: Ava & Isaac Stanley and Marc Monaghan

Catered by: Bumbu Roux

Hosted Beer and Wine Bar

The Promontory - 5311 S. Lake Park Ave. W, Chicago, IL 60615

Please scroll down for information on the performance and honorees.

Reserve a Table or Purchase Single Tickets:

$2,800 for a table for 6

$1,700 for a table for 4

$850 for a table for 2

$250 each for individual seats

If you wish to purchase a table or single tickets by credit card or PayPal, please fill in the amount for your table reservation or individual ticket(s) using the “other” selection on the PayPal page linked below. We will confirm your purchase and reserve your table. Thank you!

To purchase a table or make a donation by check:

Please make checks out to Hyde Park Jazz Festival and mail to:

Kate Dumbleton

Executive Director: HPJF

1723 W. Erie Street #4

Chicago, IL 60622

Pharez Whitted Quintet

Pharez Whitted is a performer, educator, composer, producer, and clinician who has performed throughout the United States and overseas, including at presidential inaugurations, on The Arsenio Hall Show, at The Billboard Music Awards, in Carnegie Hall, and at major jazz festivals throughout the country. He studied music at DePauw University and went on to earn a master’s degree from Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. He has taught at Wabash College, The Ohio State University, and, most recently, Chicago State University. 

Whitted has performed with such notable musicians as Branford Marsalis, George Duke, Elvin Jones, Kirk Whalum, John Mellencamp, Nancy Wilson, Meshell Ndegeocello, Chaka Khan, and Slide Hampton. He has released two CDs on the MoTown jazz label and four on other labels. He has been nominated for Independent Jazz Artist of the Year (2011), named Chicagoan of the Year in Jazz (2016), inducted into the Shortridge High School Hall of Fame (2017), and awarded an Alumni Citation from DePauw University (2018).

He is currently Professor of Jazz Trumpet at Northern Illinois University, Director of the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra (CYSO) Jazz Orchestra, Coordinator of the Chicago Division of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Let Freedom Swing program, a clinician for the Jazz at Lincoln Center Essentially Ellington Program, a Jazz Mentor for the Jazz Scholar Program as part of the Ravinia Reach, Teach, Play Program, and a member of the Board of Directors for the Jazz Education Network (JEN).

2025 Hyde park Jazz Festival Benefit HONOREES

Ava & Isaac Stanley

Ava & Isaac Stanley have been listeners/supporters of Jazz for many decades. Growing up in Chicago, Ava’s first experience with contemporary jazz was by exposure to her parent’s extensive record collection and first-hand accounts of their patronage of legendary Chicago jazz venues such as Club DeLisa and the Bee Hive. When records were not been played, Ava’s parents would sometimes hum or scat Charlie Parker or Miles Davis riffs and solos.  Ava’s godfather was Chicago tenor saxophone virtuoso E. Parker McDougal and a close friend of Ava’s father, Bill Harris. In a 1992 Chicago Tribune article, Howard Reich called McDougal one of the “world’s greatest jazz musicians.” In 1974 McDougal’s “Grits” record label released an album entitled Initial Visit. The first cut on the album “For Godchild” was written for Ava. Some four decades earlier, Ava’s great Aunt Alice was a percussionist with the Lafayette Theater Women’s Orchestra in NYC. Ava very closely resembles her Aunt Alice and is also a percussionist, traditional African and tap dancer and vocalist. Ava is currently teaching herself to play piano.

Isaac’s first exposure to the jazz recording tradition was when his Philadelphia neighbor & big brother Wayne, on leave from the Marine Corps, brought home a Cal Tjader LP called “Soul Burst.” Before that, Isaac’s home was filled with the recorded sounds of blues, gospel, and R&B.  Jazz filled the home of one neighbor whose sons were Isaac’s friends. Charlie Parker and Gene Ammons tunes were the staple in this household and local barbershop. Around 12 years old, Isaac learned to sight read music & play guitar. After retirement, Isaac occasionally picks up his Stratocaster to play rock, R&B and accompany Ava singing jazz standards or gospel tunes.

Ava and Isaac met at Swarthmore College in the early 1970’s. During this time, the sounds of John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Freddie Hubbard, Doug and Jean Carn, Nina Simmone & Philadelphia R&B formed the backdrop for college studies and student activism. Frequent weekend trips to Philadelphia’s Aqua Lounge surrounded Ava and Isaac with the artistry of Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Pharoah Sanders, and McCoy Tyner. On campus concerts spanned the range from the Allman Brothers in 1970 to Sun Ra’s Arkestra in 1972.

Married in 1973, Ava and Isaac settled in Chicago. In 1992, Isaac’s job promotion required a relocation east where their extensive record collection is in storage at their NJ residence.  In addition to supporting the Hyde Park Jazz Festival, Southside Jazz Collective and Jazz Institute of Chicago, they continue to support the work of Ignite, a Chicago non-profit that stands “with youth who are experiencing homelessness on their journey to a home and a future with promise.”

Isaac retired from a 30-year career as a Business Analyst, data expert & programmer with a major insurance company & now teaches yoga and meditation. Ava recently retired from the practice of cardiovascular medicine capping off a 48-year medical career.

Ava and Isaac are parents to two sons/daughters-in law George & Gladys and Christoper & Amanda. George is a professional engineer in eastern PA. Chris is a musician (trumpet, recorded under the name “Behnu”) and yoga/wellness instructor at Berklee College and the NYC area.

Marc Monaghan

Marc Monaghan's journey as a photographer started when he was a child exploring the California Coast Ranges with his border-collie mutt Suki and a Brownie Starmatic.

After elementary school Marc set the camera to the side, got a bachelor’s degree at UC Berkeley, a Ph.D. at Yale, worked and lived in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Egypt and Pakistan, learned enough of several languages to get by, and found himself as an academician at the University of Chicago and Purdue.

The reality of being an academic geochemist working in a sterile wet chemistry laboratory while pursuing grants in ill-fitting suits was neither satisfying nor compelling. Marc then started a journey back to his youth and the camera.

He became a middle school educator at the Laboratory Schools and studied photography at Columbia College Chicago. Marc's first published picture was of the Lab School's Rites of May and was printed on the front page of the Hyde Park Herald in June of 1999.

After the Sun Times fired its staff photographers, Marc picked up a pencil and studied creative nonfiction writing at the University of Chicago's Graham School.

Marc contributes regularly as a photographer to the Hyde Park Herald and less regularly to WBEZ, the Sun Times and the Chicago Reader. His work has been published by Atlantic Online, Politico, The Chicago Tribune, Pro Publica and other journals. He does inhouse photography for several South Side dance companies and a number of non-profits in the Pilsen and Little Village neighborhoods. He writes for the HP Herald.

Marc thinks of himself as a community photographer and documentarian, a role that fits well with the ethos of the Hyde Park Jazz Festival, which he has photographed since its inception.