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…
Spoken word artist Saul Williams contributed to David Murray’s Blues For Memo (Motéma).
(Photo: Geordie Wood)Has the way you listen to jazz changed?
I spend a lot of time going back and discovering the forefathers of this creative jazz shit, just because I felt like I needed to have a working knowledge of what all these older cats are trying to instill in me and what they were referencing. It’s really interesting to hear all of these distinctions.
I was talking to Christian Scott [recently], and he was telling me when he was a kid, he wasn’t allowed to listen to anyone who was alive. That was the rule in his house, because you don’t want to have a style that’s compared to anybody contemporary.
Lyricist Lounge, Vol. 1 was released 20 years ago. Was the journey from poetry to hip-hop similar to your journey into jazz?
The Lyricist Lounge thing was literally just a natural progression from what I was doing at the Nuyorican Café, and then getting in with Stretch and Bobbito, who had made a night of hip-hop and poetry there. And I was always on the poetry side. But because of that, a lot of MCs recognized what I was doing and saw there was a relationship to rapping. So, they were OK with complimenting me, because I wasn’t an MC and I wasn’t trying to battle them. As a result, they started being really generous and inviting me out to participate in these jam sessions called “ciphers.”
It also had a lot to do with the fact that commercial hip-hop was pushing away from lyricism during that time period with the gangsta explosion and Puff Daddy and all that. So, cats in New York were really into the boom bap and exploring it even further. And when I think of it now, there was definitely a spirit of jazz in that period of hip-hop, with those freestyle ciphers. It was similar, to me, to what was going on in the ’60s and ’70s during the whole loft-jazz era. And I think, even if it was subconsciously, we felt that and we dug it. There was definitely a feeling of jazz at the Lyricist Lounge. DB
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…
