This week the Englewood Jazz Festival celebrates its 25th anniversary with three days of music in Hamilton Park—a remarkable achievement, especially considering the neighborhood Whole Foods lasted just six years. The determination of the festival’s visionary founder, saxophonist Ernest Dawkins, and a host of local supporters have made this community event much more than an outpost of a corporate chain. For this special occasion, the festival features Dawkins’s inspirational jazz poetry opera, Paul Robeson: Man of the People. The music in this piece, which he wrote for an ensemble of 12, projects a weight that matches the powerful oratory of the titular 20th-century artist and social activist. Dawkins’s string arrangements frame words from librettist and vocalist Lasana D. Kazembe and singer Goldie Ingram, and spontaneous interplay between these voices and individual instrumentalists propels each movement. Such exchanges include Kazembe and Ingram’s call-and-response with pianist and vibraphonist Isaiah Keith as well as the dialogue between Dawkins and trumpeter Corey Wilkes (who performs his own set Saturday). The work has rarely been performed since it premiered in May in Indianapolis, and no recording has yet been released—so this Englewood Jazz Festival booking is a crucial opportunity. Along with Dawkins’s large-scale work, the weekend is loaded with Chicago stalwarts, among them Wilkes, bassist Junius Paul, and saxophonist Greg Ward leading small groups. The festival also highlights artists who work primarily in other cities but made their names here, most notably Afrofuturist flutist Nicole Mitchell, now a professor at the University of Virginia. Another exciting booking: Chicago-raised pianist Jahari Stampley is making another local victory lap after winning the prestigious Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz International Competition last year. Stampley is roughly the same age as the festival itself, and his set reinforces how events like this keep the music thriving.
Englewood Jazz FestivalThu 9/19: Junius Paul (6 PM) and Jahari Stampley (7 PM). Fri 9/20: Jeremiah Collier & the Reup (6 PM) and Nicole Mitchell (7 PM). Sat 9/21: Black South Side Jazz Presenters panel discussion (noon), the Young Masters directed by Ernest Dawkins (1 PM), Corey Wilkes (2:15 PM), Greg Ward (3:30 PM), the Spirit of Jazz Award presentation (4:30 PM), and the jazz poetry opera Paul Robeson: Man of the People (4:45 PM). Thu–Fri 6–8 PM, Sat noon–6 PM, Hamilton Park (field house Thu–Fri, outdoors Sat), 513 W. 72nd, free, all ages
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