Plans for Hyde Park Jazz Festival include both virtual and roving performances at end of September
By Aaron Gettinger, staff writer
Jul 1, 2020 Updated Jul 2, 2020
Current plans call for the Hyde Park Jazz Festival, last of the neighborhood’s warm weather cultural events, to be the only one with in-person events. Alongside a big virtual concert on Sept. 26, artists are slated to perform at mobile stages across Hyde Park on Sept. 27.
“We didn't want to cancel the festival outright, because we really wanted to keep the spirit of the festival and the festival weekend intact in some way as a kind of marker of commitment to the community and to sustain the festival in the future,” said executive and artistic director Kate Dumbleton in an interview. “We wanted to get creative about how we could do that in a safe way.”
Concern for artists’ livelihoods also motivated the decision: the annual festival, now in its 14th year, plans to spend $60,000 on booking talent to perform. So organizers will try to have it both ways, tapping into the grassroots, community-driven spirit that Dumbleton says defines the event.