# Photos: The 11th annual Hyde Park Jazz Festival: Marking the 100th anniversary of Thelonious Monk’s birth: Video

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2017/09/27/photos-11th-annual-hyde-park-jazz-festival-marking-100th-anniversary-thelonious-monks-birth-video/
- Published: 2017-09-27T20:57:33+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**The 11th annual Hyde Park Jazz Festival, populating a dozen varied venues amid
the picturesque splendor of the festival’s namesake neighborhood on the South Side
of Chicago, proved as stimulating as ever this time around (Sept. 23–24). **

Programmed for the sixth year by the astute, visionary Kate Dumbleton—and assisted
by music manager Carolyn Albritton, managing director Olivia Junell and stalwart
new operations manager Dave Rempis, among others—the HPJF is unlike any other festival
in its intensity and pace. Its principal hit: an offering of 30 presentations between
1 p.m. and midnight on Sept. 23.

The overlaps of concerts are carefully timed so that it is possible to catch portions
of some simultaneous sets if you are a fast walker, but completists will be frustrated.

Despite the out of town stars that brightened the diverse bill (including Bill McHenry
and Andrew Cyrille, Amina Claudine Myers, Jeremy Pelt, Oliver Lake, Joe Locke and
Warren Wolf, plus the Malian musicians who collaborated with Nicole Mitchell), it
was the local duo of Nick Mazzarella and Tomeka Reid at DuSable Museum that most
impressed. Altoist Mazzarella was last heard in such a context at the HPJF alongside
one of the festival’s regular fixtures, drummer Dana Hall. (In fact, Hall, performing
solo, preceded Mazzarella’s set with cellist Reid on the DuSable stage.)

Under cascading drapes and soft lighting, the unlikely twosome (alto/cello duos 
are as rare as the teeth of hens) stationed themselves about six feet away from 
each other. An infrequent meeting for them, the two had collaborated two and a half
years prior to record the audacious _Signaling_ for the legendary Chicago progressive
imprint Nessa.

An acknowledged precedent and inspiration for the project was the nexus between 
cellist Abdul Wadud and saxophonist Julius Hemphill. A listen to Hemphill and Wadud’s
_Live In New York_ (1976) bears comparison to _Signaling_, which opens with a baleful
paean to these predecessors called “Blues For Julius And Abdul,” during which the
bluesy melisma of the alto conjures the impassioned feelings that saxophonists Charlie
Mariano and Ron Aspery used to generate.

The duo at DuSable let the music do the talking and skipped announcements.

Mazzarella’s keen, preaching tone owes its foremost debt to Ornette Coleman and,
to a lesser extent, Henry Threadgill, but he has smelted his influences into a compelling
new alloy. Though his conception was suggestive of Hemphill in this context, Mazzarella’s
approach was less scrappy than its antecedent, more measured, streamlined and virtuosic
when the moment called. He played with relaxed concentration, smoothing out his 
thick beard or manipulating a string of bells or dropping them to the floor as a
rhythmical comp to Reid’s excursions.

The latter’s instrument demands greater movement, and her long, wiry arms and sharp
elbows made busy atop the cello’s fingerboard. On “The Ancestors Speak” it sounded
as though Reid (whose primary influences are Wadud and Threadgill sidewoman Diedre
Murray) had prepared her cello with alligator clips on each string (the resulting
timbre recalling the ominous sounds Charles Mingus used to elicit on bass). Yet 
the live set, as with the bulk of the new album, was wholly improvised. You would
have been forgiven for assuming these were set pieces, such was the knowing timing
between the two.

Both musicians maintained a high level of invention during their 60 minutes on stage.
Mazarella gamely approximated or counterbalanced the whinnying velocity of Reid’s
arco work with a succession of vented trills, pecky squawks and bird-like peeps.
They reined their bluesy pas de deux outro to a barely audible volume, then ended
on the stroke of 5:30 p.m., despite having no ability to monitor the time while 
playing.

Over at the Logan Center Performance Hall, another outstanding presentation, “Bamako*
Chicago Sound System,” was a centerpiece, permitting two sets a couple hours apart.
This was a major commission for the festival in partnership with the concurrent 
citywide World Music Festival and would not have been possible without partial underwriting
from the MacArthur Foundation. A collaboration between flautist Nicole Mitchell 
and Malian kora master Ballaké Sissoko brought together local percussionist JoVia
Armstrong, spirited and original singer Mankwe Ndosi, guitarist Jeff Parker and 
West Africans Fatim Kouyaté and balafon player Fassery Diabaté.

Mitchell is never afraid to take risks and put forward projects that may be just
germinating rather than fully realized or over-rehearsed, whereas this one seemed
to blossom before our ears. Particularly delightful was the empathy between singers
Ndosi and Kouyaté, and the joy with which Jeff Parker connected with Sissoko.

Marking the 100th anniversary of Thelonious Monk’s birth, the festival invited Monk
biographer Robin D.G. Kelley to speak, and Kelley de-bunked popular myths about 
the pianist, most notably that he was a solitary, tunnel-visioned obsessive who 
lacked technique. Kelley’s talk touched on matters of consequence to Monk outside
the realm of the jazz club—beyond the Minton’s scene in Harlem—that also played 
a part in shaping his music, including the influence of his mother, Barbara. One
caveat would be forgetting to credit the photographers: There were several outstanding
Jim Marshall shots in Kelley’s slideshow that were used without acknowledgment.

Monk was again the focus of a presentation in the Logan Penthouse later that day.
This time it was an informal lecture by clarinetist Ben Goldberg, yet another one-
off booking by Dumbleton. “I had heard [Ben] play solo before, and he did a Monk
tune at that time,” she said. “He was also in an incredibly great trio back when
I lived in San Francisco in the early 2000s called ‘Plays Monk’ with drummer Scott
Amendola and bassist Devin Hoff. It was _so_ good. So that’s how I knew about Ben
playing Monk and how amazing he was at it. Also, Ben was deeply inspired by Steve
Lacy [who played with Monk]. So I thought it would be a nice contribution to a Monk
celebration and different from the other programs. The Penthouse seemed like a perfect
spot for it.”

A “Monk and the Ladies” program featured Dee Alexander and Reid, performing together
with renowned Detroit musicians Marion Hayden, Alexis Lombré and Gayellyn McKinney
at the Wagner Stage. And at International House, “Double Monk” presented pianists
Jeremy Kahn and Steve Million on two pianos together with dancer Ariane Dolan.

“Attendance was the highest to date,” summarized Dumbleton after the event (which
drew approximately 18,000 people across its two days). “Every year it’s a deeper
honor to program the Hyde Park Jazz Festival. The level of passion for and the commitment
to the annual convening is beyond inspiring. The musical roots of the South Side
are so diverse and so rich that programming in 2017 is a wide-open palette. I can’t
imagine a better place to put on a jazz festival.”

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