The 2nd Annual Hyde Park Jazz Festival 2008

The 2nd Annual Hyde Park Jazz Festival on Saturday, September 27, 2008, will bring together world-class headliners and local emerging artists for 14 hours of FREE, non-stop jazz at 12 creative and unexpected venues in Hyde park.

The 2nd Annual Hyde Park Jazz Festival is produced by the Hyde Park Cultural Alliance, the University of Chicago, and the Hyde Park Jazz Society.
Location

The Hyde Park Jazz Festival utilizes a variety of creative and unexpected performance venues located in Hyde Park and adjacent communities. For a list of all venues, please see the Schedule page. For more information about Hyde Park, please visit www.hydeparkchamberchicago.org
Hours

The festival begins at noon at the DuSable Museum of African American History on Saturday, September 27, 2008 and closes Sunday, September 28, 2008 at the International House with a Slam Jam that begins at midnight.
Tickets

All performances are FREE. Please note there are some venues that have a very limited seating capacity. Seating will be available on a first come first served basis.

The schedule is subject to change without notice. Please visit this website regularly for the most up-to-date information.

http://www.hydeparkjazzfestival.org/schedule.shtml

Kahil El'Zabar and Friends Thursday, Febuary 22, 2007

Steppenwolf Theatre Company is delighted to kick off the Traffic Jam by welcoming back its original curator, Kahil El'Zabar.

An internationally renowned percussionist and composer, Kahil El'Zabar is considered one of the most prolific jazz innovators of his time; he’ll be welcoming audiences with a night of music that flows from ancient Africa to the modern world.

The production will feature performances from The Ethnic Heritage Ensemble and Orchestra Infinity.

Immediately following the performance, Landmark Grill & Lounge (1633 N. Halsted) will host an Amstel Light reception celebrating the Traffic Jam.

This production is part of Traffic Jam, a 3-week festival of music, language and performance.

http://www.steppenwolf.org/boxoffice/productions/index.aspx?id=398

Featuring Stephen Berry, Ari Brown, Ernest Khabeer Dawkins, Kahil El'Zabar, Robert Griffin, Fareed Haque, Robert Baabe Irving III, Jabari Liu, Norman Palm, Junius Paul, Isaiah Spencer, Corey Wilkes and Enoch Williamson

The performane will take place in the downstairs theatre Thursday, February 22, 2007 at 7:30pm.

The renowned percussionist, composer and original Traffic curator, returns to open the Traffic Jam.

Great Black Music by The Ethnic Heritage Ensemble

The Ethnic Heritage Ensemble are minimalists. But their slow-burning mix of cycling African rhythms, somnambulistic patience, restrained intensity, and whispery near-silence is a strain of minimalism they invented. As leader/visionary Kahil El'Zabar says, "People are just starting to really understand what we're doing. Earlier, people talked about the music as some kind of primitive groove. They didn't understand the rhythmic complexities, the confluences, and how the harmonies that we write make it sound much bigger than it really is.

Now there are many people attempting to stretch the possibilities within a minimalist approach. We've been doing it for over 20 years." The Ethnic Heritage Ensemble's music builds complexity from simplicity, diversifies through repetition, transcends time by emphasizing it. Their laser-like ability to set the rhythm button on infinite repeat creates a hypnosis similar to the mind-buzz of classical minimalists like Steve Reich and Terry Riley. The best example on Ka-Real is "Kampfumo Shuffle," a brain-altering loop whose multi-layered density seems impossible given the one-eyed persistence of the never-abandoned beat. Or check out a live El'Zabar earthdrum solo, wherein his total mental and physical unification with the rhythm parallels Riley's cross-legged all-night flights.

The eternal beat of the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble is more than percussive. Each band member is always playing rhythm, whether by losing hands in a blur of conga slapping or trap-kit punching, rattling out an accompaniment on the band's endless collection of sound-making implements, or weaving a solo through the drumbeat like a snake exploring a skeleton. As El'Zabar says, "A lot of melodic players just glisten over structures set by the rhythm section, rather than being an intricate part of those structures, at the same time as expressing ideas harmonically and melodically. Everyone in our group is really cognizant of the rhythmic structures, and they each have the ability to appropriate it, and to transmute it." The patience on Ka-Real is superhuman. Nothing happens quickly. Each solo is calmly and devoutly built, each climax forms naturally from a long, meditative ascent, and slowly slides back. Less becomes more so gradually that the two are indistinguishable. As El'Zabar says, "We can go from an small kind of whisper, to an intense high-volume level easily. Using African drums, a trombone, and a saxophone could sound like one gurgle. But because of the skill each of us brings to our instruments, it doesn't sound muddled."

This is the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble's third record with its current lineup, and you can smell the momentum smoking out of the speakers. El'Zabar and Murray play a deep rhythm, a bottomless beat-well whose endless patterns and timbres reverberate around each other like frogs hopping into each other's mouths. Bowie and Dawkins flip every sound inside out, turning each note over until it divides into an outer shell and inner core, then melts back together. Bowie's pointed, rapid-fire sound-grenades are pyrotechnic. Dawkins' helium-infused flights into the upper register lift skyward so incrementally it feels like it's the earth and not his sound that's moving.

One could spend years mapping the high points on Ka-Real: El'Zabar's bone-melting thumb piano cycle on "Great Black Music"; Dawkins' stunning lung-muscle solo on "Hang Tough"; Bowie's machine-gun note-flares on "The Christening". Each song is like an album of its own, but the disc's best mini-environment is "Ka-Real," a drifting, cloudy globe of hidden, ghostly sound. Joe Bowie's composition floats above the other tunes, haunting the album like a shapeless spectre. "I wanted to create the traditional ballad feel, but with the freedom rhythmically to flow around that feel," says Bowie. "Like a ballad with an aura of fog around it, which gives it room to just go anywhere."

The Ethnic Heritage Ensemble's patient devotion to timeless motion blurs past, present, and future. This band has happened, is happening, will happen - all at exactly the same time. "The future of the group happened years ago," El'Zabar says. "We're in this information period where shit is thrown real quick, a lot of us miss it. But those of us who

Ethnic Heritage Ensemble