Chicago’s Jazz Festival Returns And Brings More Than Just Nostalgia To The Lakefront On Labor Day Weekend

Sep 08, 2025 admin_bitlc Features, Music News, Reviews 0

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By Vern Hester

Chicago is known for the blues, pizza, basketball, politics and jazz and one could be forgiven for assuming that the 2025 version of the Annual Chicago Jazz Festival would be stuffed to bursting with age old conventions, traditions, and nostalgia. Despite expectations, what really went down on the weekend of August 28, 29, 30 and 31^st had nothing to do with quaint thoughts, nostalgia, or traditions and all about respect, new voices, energy and talents, and a tip of the hat to the past. There was so much going on at this year’s festival that I certainly could not cover everything, but what I did see was overwhelming.

For opening night guitarist Henry Johnson and his crack band (Billy Foster on piano, Thaddeus Tukes on vibes, Charles Heath on drums, and Mark Sonksen on bass) kicked off the festival with a set of smooth playing that was reminiscent of icons Wes Montgomery and George Benson. It was a polished set that could be slotted into the “conventional” category except for Tukes’ kinetic playing and the bands easy cohesion.

Headliner esperanza spalding threw all that convention to the wind by striding out in a white lace antebellum gown, plopping herself down at a Steinway Grand Piano, and launching into a giggly reading of Veruca Salt’s theme song from the film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, “I Want it All.” What followed was no less striking as she genre hopped from Brazilian music to mainstream jazz to funk to chamber jazz while delighting in her collaborations with Milton Nascimento, Wayne Shorter, Fred Hirsch, and Joe Lovano. Despite winning an armload of Grammies her giddy, joy packed performance here (with bandmates Matthew Stevens on guitar, drummer Eric Doob, and multi-instrumentalist Morgan Guerin), came as a bit of a shock. spaulding’s pure joy was hardly what I expected and she proved that the new generation of jazz players are not trolling in your Mom’s  jazz.

At the start of each subsequent day was The Windy City Ramblers-Second Line Band, a jolly marching band made up of neighborhood participants who kicked off each day’s events by serenading the crowd as they walked from the Bean sculpture to the Pritzker Pavilion bringing the show onto the Great Lawn. Riotous and joyful, it was the closest thing that Chicago has to a New Orleans funeral without the grief or the dead body. Brazilian born bassist and arranger Marcel Bonfim was joined by chanteuse Silvia Manrique for a set of sambas and bossa nova which managed to be both elegant and kinetic.

Next came Chicago ex-patriate Patricia Barber who was playing the festival for the first time in twenty-two years. Despite all that time she still managed to turn the sunny spacious outdoor environment of the pavilion into a hushed, smokey, somber space with quiet gently lilting versions of Dimitri Toimkin’s “Wild is the Wind” and Carlos Santana’s “Black Magic Woman.” Not that Barber’s set was anywhere near sleepy or a drag as she and her band (Emma Dayhoff on bass, Jon Deitemyer on drums, and Neal Alger on guitar) had a giddy blast with her own “Company.”

Sunday saw a pile up of extreme talent on the Jay Pritzker Pavilion Stage that was so dense it would have been enough for a stand-alone festival. First up was the Natalie Scharf Quintet (featuring pianist/vocalist Paul Asaro, Dan Anderson on bass, Joel Paterson on guitar, and Alex Hall on drums) which rather than celebrating new directions embraced old ones. Borrowing heavily from Fats Waller’s playbook (including “T’Ain’t Nobody’s Business If I Do”) with a quick detour through Colman Hawkins (“Body and Soul”) the quintet was augmented with a sextet of dancers who seemed to have a high old time performing during the entire set.

After all that breeziness the G. Thomas Allen Quintet came off as something of an unexpected surprise. Allen, who is known as an opera singer and gospel performer stunned the audience with his seductively androgynous lithe voice. His reading of “Good Morning Heartache” from the film Lady Sings the Blues and his tribute to the late Sheila Jordan (“I Get Misty”) were almost chilling in their delicacy.

The Ari Brown Quintet started the evening in a purely traditional mode with Brown, now 81 leading a band of seasoned players (brother Kirk Brown on piano, Dr. Cruz on congas, Kwame Steve Cobb on drums, and Yosef Ben-Israel on bass) through an intricate set of old school jazz standards including a tribute to George Freeman (“Georgie Porgy”). After the passing of Fred Anderson, Von Freeman, Clifford Jordan, and Johnny Griffin, Brown is the only artist left to carry on the great Chicago tenor tradition, and the audience sat up as they drank in what may very well be a history lesson.

The finale for the festival was the arrival of Eliades Ochoa, the only still performing member of the legendary Buena Vista Social Club (93-year-old Omara Portuondo is too frail to perform) who performed songs from his own recordings including Guajiro, his first ever collection of mostly original autobiographical songs. Ochoa was joined onstage by Jorge Daniel Perez Cuesta on piano, Luis Ernesto Beltran on saxophone, Andres Polanco Rivas on percussion, Alberto Pantaleon on bass, and Orlando De Jesus Fraga Perez on trumpet.

For more on Chicago’s Jazz Fest, click here

Photos from Chicago Jazz Festival 2025, click here

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• 2025, Ari Brown Quintet, Buena Vista Social Club, chicago jazz festival, DCASE, Eliades Ochoa, esperanza spalding, Grant Park, live, millennium park, Natalie Scharf Quintet, Patricia Barber, Pavilion, The Windy City Ramblers

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