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…
McLean was founder and artistic director of the Jackie McLean Institute of Jazz at the University of Hartford's Hartt School. He and his wife, actress Dollie McLean, also founded the Artists Collective, a community center and fine arts school in Hartford's inner city primarily serving troubled youth. McLean was one of the few veterans who encouraged the new ideas of the free-jazz movement that followed.
McLean was born on May 17, 1932, in New York. He began playing the saxophone when he was 15 and shortly afterwards played with Sonny Rollins (1948-'49). During the next 10 years, he worked with Miles Davis, Paul Bley and Charles Mingus, and was also a member of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers before forming his own quintet in 1958. On such records as 4,5, And 6 and Swing Swang Swingin', McLean displayed a heavy Charlie Parker influence, but maintained his own approach to rhythm and feeling for the blues. He also wrote the standards "Dig" and "Hip Strut" and acted in the play The Connection from 1959 to 1961. While he received inspiration from the innovators of the late '50s and early '60s, McLean released New Soil, One Step Beyond, Destination...Out! and New And Old Gospel. These records featured his own increasingly complex writing and Gospel included Ornette Coleman on trumpet. In 1968, McLean began teaching at the University of Hartford in Connecticut.
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.
Oct 6, 2026 1:33 PM
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.
Sep 8, 2026 11:52 AM
It began in 2001. A travel agent named Anita E. Berry had been booking clients on “partial” jazz cruises that took…
Sep 17, 2026 11:00 AM
The 2027 DownBeat College Guide is an invaluable resource for music students, especially jazz students, to find a school…
