Sep 22, 2026 12:26 PM
Hyde Park Jazz Fest on Chicago’s South Side to Present 20th Edition
The Hyde Park Jazz Festival will take place for the 20th time on the final weekend of September 2026. Beginning half…
“I am extremely excited to join the Heads Up team,” Najee said. “I’m looking forward to what I believe will be an extremely rewarding creative experience.”
The Najee signing and album is just one of the events surrounding the 15th anniversary of Heads Up, which was founded by musician/entrepreneur Dave Love in 1990. Other with debut releases for the label in 2005 include recording by Walter Beasley and Michael Brecker.
“I’m delighted to join an organization which is fast becoming a force in contemporary instrumental music,” says Brecker.
Heads Up will be honored in March ‘05 with concerts at the Berks Jazz Fest in Reading, Pennsylvania, and the North Sea Jazz Festival in Cape Town, South Africa.
In 2005, the company also releases exciting new recordings by jazz fusion pioneers Yellowjackets and Hiroshima, steel pan master Andy Narell with his French-Caribbean band Sakésho, and label veterans pianist/vocalist Joe McBride and bassist Gerald Veasley.
“I’ve been fortunate to be a part of the Heads Up family since 1992 and have watched its remarkable evolution,” Veasley says. “Through the determination of its hardworking president, Dave Love, and his great staff, Heads Up has grown in stature and influence in the jazz community. It’s especially gratifying to me, since they believed in me at a time when there were precious few bassists who were solo recording artists. Now, six recordings later, I credit Heads Up with making it possible for me to have shared my music with listeners around the world.”
A solo concert by saxophonist Joshua Redman will close the first night of the Hyde Park Jazz Festival on Sept. 26.
Sep 22, 2026 12:26 PM
The Hyde Park Jazz Festival will take place for the 20th time on the final weekend of September 2026. Beginning half…
“It was just that suddenly … I could hear it,” Ravi Coltrane said of an epiphany he experienced during his late teens regarding his father’s music. “And it was almost like a calling, like something saying, ‘Hey, man, come on. It’s time to get serious.’ And the first time you really tune in and dial in and focus like that, it can be very life-changing.”
Sep 22, 2026 1:39 PM
Editor’s Note: Tomorrow, Sept. 23, is the 100th anniversary of John Coltrane’s birth. In honor of the tenor and…
Camille Thurman took to the stage alongside bassist Kenny Davis and drummer Tommy Campbell for a rendition of Johnny Mercer’s “I’m An Old Cowhand” that recalled Rollins’ epochal 1957 trio outing Way Out West.
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As emcee Mark Ruffin noted at the commencement of an epic tribute to saxophonist Sonny Rollins at the Cathedral of Saint…
Kurt Elling, Katherine Russell and Emmet Cohen (host on the 2027 Jazz Cruise) share a laugh at sea.
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It began in 2001. A travel agent named Anita E. Berry had been booking clients on “partial” jazz cruises that took…
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The 2027 DownBeat College Guide is an invaluable resource for music students, especially jazz students, to find a school…
