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Hyde Park’s Arts Community

Some of the greatest names on Chicago’s jazz scene will be highlighting this year’s Hyde Park Jazz Festival coming up on September 29 and 30 including Dee Alexander, Victor Goines, Wycliffe Gordon, Jeff Parker, and Tomeka Reid. HyPa and the Hyde Park Jazz Society, as co-producers of the Jazz Fest, are also hyped to announce this year’s Festival Director, Kate Dumbleton who joins the Jazz Fest from the Chicago Jazz Ensemble (CJE) at Columbia College in Chicago.

Named by Chicago Magazine as the 2011 Best Neighborhood Music Festival, the 6th annual event will continue to be on the Midway on the University of Chicago campus and in the many creative and unexpected, indoor and outdoor venues throughout the Hyde Park neighborhood.
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2011 was a year of “bests” for HyPa’s arts and cultural organizations.  Whether it was for theatre, museum exhibitions, art, music, architecture or food … the awards and accolades are shining on the Chicago Culture Coast.

In performances the Court Theatre stole the show.  This year the Court earned prestigious Jeff Awards for Director Charles Newell and Music Director Doug Peck in the “Large Musical” category for their new look at “The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess.”  Chris Jones, theater critic for the Chicago Tribune included An Iliad as one of the top 10 best shows of 2011.  And TimeOut Chicago featured both shows in their 2011 top 10 list.
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Reprinted courtesy of Concierge Preferred

When looking for things to do in Hyde Park in Chicago, there’s no shortage of parks, museums, galleries, information centers, architectural sites, education centers, religious institutions, and more. Taking a walk through Hyde Park will expose Chicagoans and tourists alike to the vast array of things to see and do, as well as the chance to admire the elegant houses and apartments that have lined the shaded streets for more than a century. Concierge Preferred is the tourist’s and visitor’s guide to enjoying all that Hyde Park has to offer, as well as the surrounding areas that are all within walking distance.
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October in Chicago means fantastic fall foliage and Chicago Artists Month (CAM). “Artful Networks” is the theme for this year’s CAM and we have plenty of Artful Networks here in Hyde Park. This is a great time to focus on the visual arts presented by nature as well as the many visual arts organizations in Hyde Park including the Hyde Park Art Center, Little Black Pearl, Renaissance Society, and Smart Museum of Art. As always, HyPa keeps a calendar of events to help you plan your visits to Hyde Park’s arts and culture organizations. Explore the artful networks  in Hyde Park!

The following article is a guest blog from HydeParkJazzBlog.

Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of joining the Chicago Office of Tourism and Culture for the last of their 2011 series of “Get Up and Go” Insider Tours – guided tours of Chicago’s diverse neighborhoods. For this tour, we traveled from the loop down Lake Shore Drive to Hyde Park, home of the 5th Annual Hyde Park Jazz Festival, led by Rebecca Janowitz, author of the book Culture of Opportunity: Obama’s Chicago – the People, Politics and Ideas of Hyde Park and a resident Hyde Parker.
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FINALLY – it is here … the Hyde Park Jazz Festival. Yes, we are talking about 2 days/20 hours of some of the greatest jazz music in Chicago. The Jazz Fest was called the “Best Neighborhood Music Festival in Chicago” by Chicago Magazine and the Tribune just called us “the fastest-growing jazz party in Chicago”. You do not want to miss this. The music will start on Saturday at 1pm and will continue through to the Midnight Jam with performances at 13 venues throughout Hyde Park. On Sunday the music will all be on the Midway from 1 to 8pm. This year the James W. Wagner Main Stage is taking over the STREET in the Midway Plaisance South for a larger stage, better sound, and more seating (bring lawn chairs) with entrances at Woodlawn and Ellis.
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Celebrating the arts on Chicago’s mid-south side is part of HyPa’s DNA.  We seek every opportunity to connect artists and residents, organizations and communities to explore and inspire each other through the arts.  So we are excited to once again transform our store front space at 5226 S. Harper Avenue, in Hyde Park, into an artist’s studio and exhibition space during October’s Chicago Artists Month (CAM).

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Join Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford and his high school students from ChiArts, the Chicago High School for the Arts,  for a ‘pre-launch “reception on Friday, June 3 from 6:30 – 8pm in the HyPa Space at 5226 S. Harper.  For the past two and half months HyPa’s artist in residence and his students have built sculptural rafts that the ChiArts students will use to stage an “immigrant landing” along the Chicago’s Lake Michigan shore line.  The Landing will be on Saturday, June 4 on a location to be announced soon.  Jeremiah hopes this work will stimulate thought and conversation regarding the U.S.’s current immigration policy and first contact experiences between cultures.   See the progress unfold on Jeremiah’s new blog.

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Change is in the air. Chicagoans will soon elect a new mayor for the first time in 22 years. The next mayor will make decisions that will impact the arts for generations.  Chicago is home to a powerful arts industry. Yet, the arts infrastructure in Chicago is vulnerable.  As a sign of a renewed and active partnership between City Hall and Chicago’s arts industry, HyPa joins   by calling on the next mayor to recognize and extend the contributions of the arts to the economy and workforce, the education of our children, and the vitality of our neighborhoods. We ask the next mayor to advance policy proposals that strengthen the arts industry in Chicago.  Please join us by signing the petition HERE.

by Heather Hartley

I’ve been obsessed with the passing of time…and concluding 2010 as a participating artist for Art Here Art Now round 2 (AHAN2) was a very fitting end to a year’s journey about the past.

My collaborator, Casey Murtaugh, and I found out our work would be part of AHAN2 in mid November, and we immediately set to work, figuring out how we could take the concepts and materials from an earlier, companion performance piece, Tell Me A Story…Nostalgia in the Digital Age, and refashion these fascinations into our proposed work for AHAN2, called, A Story Told….
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