Jazz Fest Ends with Stunning Success
Well, you couldn’t have asked for a more perfect weekend as far as the weather is concerned for the 29th Annual Chicago Jazz Festival. It took place over Labor Day Weekend, really starting last Thursday and running through Sunday. The area that also hosts the Taste of Chicago was the location and it had three stages filled with music all day long on all days. This was combined with an art show and sale and lots of great food.
It certainly seems to have been a resounding success. The initial estimates are that some 315,000 people attended the official stage performances over the three days. This is up from 310,000 in 2006 and 300,000 even for 2005.
I walked around the stages on Sunday. It certainly seemed like everyone was having a good time and the organizers seemed very anxious to get one band on after another so that people did not have to sit around in the hot sun without music for too long.
Some of the performances are already being hailed as greats. The one performance that keeps being mentioned again and again by fans and reporters was the performance on Saturday night by the Charlie Haden Liberation Music Orchestra. Charlie came out and defiantly mixed his political beliefs with an outstanding performance.
If there is one problem the festival has is that it has to use the very old and outdated Petrillo Music Shell in Grant Park. Not a stone’s throw away is the far-superior in design and sound quality Pritzker Pavillion which is part of Millenium Park. Of course, in order to have three stages in close proximity, you need to shut down streets which are near Petrillo, which makes the use of that stage necessary.
The problem? Well, Petrillo, as I mentioned, it old. The sound isn’t as good. Even the sightlines and views of the stage are not as good as Pritzker. Of course, Grant Park can also hold a lot more people whereas the Pritzker has a rather limited number that can sit comfortably.
I was not able to stick around for the close of the festival on Sunday. It turns out this may have been the dumbest thing I did all weekend. By all reports the final performance by Rob Mazurek’s Exploding Star Orchestra may have been about the best closing performance you could have wanted.
I already checked and it seems you can find some videos on YouTube from people who recorded performances at the Festival. I would include some links, but there were so many of them, I couldn’t figure out which ones to link to. I suggest you just type in “Chicago Jazz Festival” when you visit the YouTube site and see what pops up.
If you attended the festival, I would love to hear from you. I’d love to know what parts you enjoyed and which things you think the festival people could do better next year.
Hope you all had a great holiday weekend and if you were at the festival, I hope you had a great time there too.
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