2 Brown Sisters/Photo: Mastermind

With nine venues and thirty-four acts over two days, the Hyde Park Jazz Festival will feature a variety of music that provides a more-than-worthy complement to the Chicago Jazz Festival. Yet this array of talent at a neighborhood festival is simply a continuation of the area’s long tradition of political and artistic expression.

Hyde Park and Kenwood became the city’s first truly integrated neighborhood in the 1960s, as students and professors from the University of Chicago joined with community members to form what became a multiracial, multicultural haven of intellectual ideas. This was the catalyst for an amazing array of Chicagoans, including political leaders like Alderman Leon Despres, Senator Paul Douglas, Harold Washington and later Barack Obama. The area was also a hub of music—jazz clubs like The Beehive Lounge at 1503 East 55th, The Southerland Hotel at 47th and South Drexel Boulevard as well as The University of Chicago’s Mandel Hall saw performers like Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane and Ramsey Lewis grace the stages. Blues great Paul Butterfield and funk queen Chaka Khan also emerged from the community. But perhaps nobody represented the artistic vision of the area better than Oscar Brown, Jr.

Playwright, broadcaster, composer, poet, political activist and performer, Brown’s scat singing on “Dat Dere” rivals that of Jon Hendricks, and his compositions and performances on songs like “Brother Where Are You?” encapsulate the area’s link between jazz and social advocacy. So it’s no surprise that the Hyde Park Jazz Festival will feature his daughters as one of the headlining and opening acts.

Carl Allen/Photo: Fred H. Politinsky

Saturday, September 27

2 Brown Sisters: Maggie and Africa Pace Brown, 3pm-4pm, Augustana Church, 5500 South Woodlawn

Maggie Brown is a multi-faceted singer and entertainer who has been a stalwart in the community for decades. In recent years she has been the featured vocalist for the sixty-piece Chicago Jazz Philharmonic Orchestra, but also performs with her own small groups. She has recorded with Abbey Lincoln, Jonathan Butler, Ramsey Lewis, Stevie Wonder, as well as Joan Collaso and the Douglass Ewart AACM Innovations Ensemble. More than anything, Brown is an energetic performer, projecting her sense of fun, kindness and fellowship every time she walks across the stage. For this performance she will be joined by her sister, Africa Pace Brown. She has upheld the traditions of the native African elements of jazz, working with the legendary South Side musician Phil Cohran and other projects with the AACM.

Dee Alexander’s Evolution Ensemble Reunion, 5:45pm-6:45pm, Wagner Stage, Midway Plaisance at South Woodlawn

A South Side native and longtime collaborator with the AACM and the late Malachi Thompson, Alexander is regarded as one of the most talented jazz singers of Chicago and beyond. Heralded as “Chicagoan of the Year” by the Chicago Tribune in 2008, her 2009 album, “Wild Is the Wind,” was placed among the top ten albums of the new millennium by DownBeat Magazine. Alexander’s ability to not only sustain notes, but alter the pitch in mid breath—as well as project mood and feeling with each breath—makes her a must-see performer.

Dee Alexander/Photo: Claude Aline Nazaire Miller

Alyssa Allgood, 6pm-7pm, Hyde Park Bank, 1525 East 53rd

It is a terrible cliché but here we go—Alyssa Allgood represents a new generation of Chicago jazz vocalists. Just a few accolades include DownBeat Rising Star 2024/2025, winner of the inaugural Ella Fitzgerald Jazz Voice Competition (2017), and best entertainer at the Chicago Music Awards (2019). If that’s not enough, Allgood is also a composer whose songs have won awards, including first place at the 2023 John Lennon Songwriting Contest. But enough of that. On songs like “Dream,” “Brave Little Flower” and “Burn (For Betty),” Allgood combines the cool, classy sounds of a nightclub jazz chanteuse with scat singing, resembling a butterfly that first floats gently above a flower then flutters like it was caught in a summer wind.

Paul Giallorenzo Trio, 6pm-7:15pm, Logan Center Penthouse, 915 East 60th

Combining bass clarinet, electronic keyboards and drums, the Paul Giallorenzo Trio’s unique configuration is matched by the originality of their music. Giallorenzo’s keyboards provide both left-hand bass, while his right produces modals, bop lines and flowing piano fills. In the meantime, Jason Stein’s bass clarinet, an instrument used more in classical than jazz compositions, gives the group an avant-garde and almost mysterious aura. Combined with the drums of Chad Taylor the band’s sound is a piece that belongs in every jazz festival puzzle.

Carl Allen and The Messengers of Jazz: Tribute to Art Blakey, 8:15pm-9:30pm, Wagner Stage, Midway Plaisance

As a collaborator with Jackie McLean, Freddie Hubbard and Michael Brecker, Carl Allen has been a longtime fixture on the jazz scene. But the Milwaukee-born drummer has also worked extensively with Benny Golson, former Jazz Messenger and composer of two of the group’s groundbreaking songs, “Blues March” and “Along Came Betty,” giving Allen a special insight into Blakey’s music. For those who may not be familiar with “my mama’s boy from Pittsburgh,” Blakey’s face could easily be part of the Mount Rushmore of Jazz. Blakey’s bands have spawned too many jazz greats to mention, and his arrangements, harmonies and driving changes are almost a blueprint for post-bop and hard bop groups.

As an aside, this writer’s first jazz experience occurred after he cajoled his way into the Jazz Showcase as a pre-teenager in the late 1970s. The group was Blakey’s Messenger configuration that at the time included Walter Davis, David Schnitter, Bobby Watson, Valery Ponomarev and Dennis Irwin. That experience is still with me today.

Billy Branch/Photo: Claudia Harrison

Sunday, September 28

The Chicago Asian American Jazz Ensemble: Origins of Now 2025, 3pm, West Stage, Midway Plaisance

In the true tradition of Hyde Park’s multi-ethnic, multi-cultural identity, the Asian American Jazz Ensemble will bring their special blend of music and cultures to the stage. Inspired by the first Asian American Jazz Festival at the Bop Shop and Hot House thirty years ago, the group features the familiar sounds of reeds, guitar, drums, flute and saxophone. But added to this are traditional Asian instruments like taiko percussion, bamboo flute and the Shamisen, a traditional, three-stringed instrument dating back to the sixteenth century.

Billy Branch and the Sons of Blues, 5pm, West Stage, Midway Plaisance

Billy Branch is the most prominent torchbearer of Chicago’s great harmonica tradition of Little Walter, Junior Wells and many others, standing as one of the greatest blues harmonica players in the world. We could end this preview here, but there’s more. Branch’s more laid-back personality has combined with his talent to extend his musical vision far beyond the blues. Branch has written forewords for three books, toured for the U.S. State Department as a cultural ambassador, presented a keynote speech for the Obama Foundation and spoke before Turkey’s Parliament.

A three-time Grammy nominee, he has also collaborated with Chicago jazz legend George Freeman on the Southport Records album release, “George The Bomb!,” co-composing the song “Where’s the Cornbread.” For this performance, Branch will be previewing his latest single, “Begging for Change,” and other material from his latest album.

Just as the Brown sisters opened it, Branch is an ideal artist to close the festival. Throughout his career, Branch has not performed as a great harmonica player and blues artist, but has served as a cultural ambassador for Hyde Park and Chicago’s spirit of artistic history, harmony and achievement.

The Hyde Park Jazz Festival runs September 27-28 at various locations in Hyde Park. For more information, visit hydeparkjazzfestival.org.