Artists at Hyde Park Jazz Festival Reflect Generational Connections
Oct. 5, 2018
In its 12th year, Chicago’s Hyde Park Jazz Festival presented an almost preposterous amount of quality music on Sept. 29, day one of the two-day event that hosted scores of programs in about a dozen disparate venues.
The day commenced at 1 p.m. with Brandee Younger in the screening room of the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts as she delivered a talk: “Transcendence: A Glimpse Into The Life And Legacy Of Alice Coltrane.” Though Coltrane was a fellow harpist who enthralled Younger as a child when she first heard “Blue Nile,” she also showed a vintage clip of Coltrane playing piano in the manner of her mentor, Bud Powell. Following this detailed appreciation came New York-based writer Nate Chinen, reading excerpts from his latest work, Playing Changes: Jazz For The New Century. Chinen picked the 1980s juncture at which Wynton Marsalis won both classical and jazz Grammys, and Herbie Hancock scored a hit with “Rockit” as a starting point to discuss the genre with local drummer/bandleader Mike Reed.