The Hyde Park Jazz Festival takes it to the streets
By Bill Meyer
October 1, 2020
With short sets from small groups in unexpected spots, the festival creates a communal experience that’s pandemic safe.
When the Hyde Park Jazz Festival's executive and artistic director, Kate Dumbleton, spoke to the Reader in August about the fest's efforts to adapt to COVID-19, she sounded hopeful that some version of the event would take place during its traditional time slot on the last weekend of September. Given that Chicago's Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events had already replaced an entire season of live outdoor programming with prerecorded video broadcasts—and that no one knew if, when, and how hard a second wave of COVID infections would hit the city—that hope seemed wildly optimistic. But the virus held off, and the festival did hold events both its usual days.
Of course, none of those events was anything like last year's festival, which featured big outdoor stages and a strip of merch booths on the Midway Plaisance, indoor shows at small venues, and a climactic concert by a large ensemble inside Rockefeller Chapel. On Saturday, six mostly masked bands livestreamed themselves playing to empty seats in the auditorium of the Logan Center for the Arts on the University of Chicago campus. And on Sunday, 18 small, brief concerts took place in parks, pedways, and sidewalks between 40th and 61st Streets.