Chicago's 24th Annual Englewood Jazz Festival Begins September 14

Long an annual tradition, Live the Spirit Residency presents the free 24th Englewood Jazz Festival - https://englewoodjazzfest.org - on September 14, 15, and 16, 2023 at Hamilton Park and Cultural Center at 513 W 72nd St.

This year the 3-day festival illuminates emerging and established homegrown artists that demonstrate Live the Spirit Residency's deep commitment to educating and mentoring the next generation of jazz. Featured artists include pianist Alexis Lombre (performing the World Premiere of her new work Synesthesia, Pt. 1), vibraphonist Joel Ross, recent winner of Downbeat Magazine's Critics Poll vibraphone category, and saxophonist and Festival Resident Artist Isaiah Collier. These artists have all achieved national and international recognition, thanks to Live the Spirit Residency and its leader Ernest Dawkins' long-term dedication to music education, mentoring, and inter-generational knowledge exchange.  

The festival will open on Thursday, September 14 with a reprise of Dawkins' Memory in the Center, an Afro Jazz Opera, originally commissioned and performed for the City's Made in Chicago series in Millennium Park in 2014. This project reflects the determination and spirit that energized the South African freedom movement led by Nelson Mandela by foregrounding the influential women in Mandela's life – Winnie Mandela and Graça Machel – through the powerful voice of Chicago's own Kopano. It will be performed by the Live the Spirit Residency Big Band. “I'm revisiting this work because its message of self-determination as an engine of progress has become even more important for people to hear at this moment,” said Dawkins. This work will also be performed soon at Poetry Africa, in honor of the tenth anniversary of Mandela's passing.

The Festival Residency has given saxophonist Isaiah Collier's Chosen Few Ensemble the space and support to advance new musical ideas. Collier says “The experience of being raised in an environment like Chicago where there have been so many opportunities to develop my vision has been pivotal to my success.”

The Young Masters will get a chance to strut while established Chicago artists including bassist Frank Russell, New Horizons with special guest guitarist Jeff Parker, and trumpeter Marques Carroll, who will summit with NY trumpeter Sean Jones, round out this community-centered celebration. 

The festival takes place rain or shine, moving indoors in case of inclement weather. Some seating is provided, but attendees are advised to bring their own chairs, blankets, picnics, and an appetite for the kind of music that uplifts and transforms the human spirit! Further information is available at englewoodjazzfest.org.

Additionally, as part of this event, to honor those whose work has helped shape and strengthen the foundation of jazz in Chicago, the annual Spirit of Jazz Awards will be presented to:
• Wayne Segal, Owner of Jazz Showcase 
• Mashaune Hardy, Associate Director of Partnerships & Strategy, Logan Center
• Pharez Whitted, Director of Jazz Studies, NIU

Sponsors of the Englewood Jazz Festival include WDCB Radio and The Chicago Park District.

Complete schedule: 24th Englewood Jazz Festival @ 513 W 72nd St

• Thursday, September 14, 2023, 6:00 PM
Ernest Dawkins Live The Spirit Residency Big Band-- Memory in the Center, an Afro-opera

• Friday, September 15, 2023, 6:00 PM
Isaiah Collier and the Chosen Few

• Saturday, September 16, 2023, 11:30 AM-6:00 PM
11:30 Live the Spirt Residency presents Young Masters. Directed by Ernest Dawkins
12:30 Alexis Lombre
1:30 Frank Russell Band
2:30 New Horizons Ensemble Delmark Allstars w Jeff Parker
3:35 Spirit of Jazz Awards
4:00 Joel Ross
5:00 Trumpet Summit: Marques Carroll / Sean Jones

Ernest Dawkins is a saxophonist and composer, whose life goal is for his music and compositions to reflect the evolving collective cultural memory of the African-American jazz aesthetic. His four decades of work as a professional artist, educator, and community-based organizer are widely recognized for shaping the contemporary cultural landscape of Chicago and beyond. He is the founder and executive director of Live the Spirit Residency and past Chairman of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). Commissions by the Jazz Institute of Chicago (Tim Black Blacker Than Black) and South Arts (Refound Connections) were both premiered in 2022. Other commissions include the Old Town School of Folk Music, the Black Metropolis Research Consortium, Sant'Anna Arresi Jazz Festival, Sons d'Hiver Festival, Banliues Bleues Festival, Meet the Composers, and the King Arts Complex of Columbus Ohio. He is the leader and founder of several ensembles, most notably the New Horizons Ensemble, Aesop Quartet, Chicago Trio, Live the Spirit Big Band, and the Chicago 12. Dawkins has recorded numerous CDs and his publishing company, Dawk Music, has seventeen releases to date.

Isaiah Collier is an arranger, composer, and activist born and raised on the South Side of Chicago within a musical family. An alumnus of the Jazz Institute of Chicago and the Chicago High School for the Performing Arts, Collier has worked and played with Chicago legends, in addition to national and International Artists. Collier is a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). He has had many mentors, including Antonio Hart, Joan Collaso, Ari Brown, and others. He has played throughout the United States in venues such as Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola, Jazz Showcase, the US Embassy in Paraguay, the Chicago Jazz Festival, Monterey Jazz Festival, Englewood Jazz Festival, Sons d'Hiver, and at International Jazz Day at the White House in 2016. In addition, Collier is also a former fellow of the Brubeck Institute in Stockton, CA

Alexis Lombre is a young jazz pianist who discovered early that the true essence of music is not just about what you hear but how music makes you feel. Her musical mission is to keep the 'Soul' in music alive. The 2017 release of her debut album, “Southside Sounds”, does just that, as it is a soulful reflection of her upbringing on Chicago's Southside. This collection of her original compositions is an attempt to pay homage to the Southside's lively artistic and cultural heritage. In addition to her debut record, she was featured on “Lifetime: Tribute to Geri Allen” by The Young Detroit Jazz Giants (2018), “Live The Spirit Residency Presents: The Young Masters" (2016), and Mikel Patrick Avery's "Music for a 1/2 Sized Piano" (2014). She has studied with jazz luminaries which include Willie Pickens, Benny Green, Geri Allen, and Robert Hurst. Lombre is in the inaugural class of Terry Lynn Carrington's Next Jazz Legacy For a More Inclusive Jazz Future, a program designed to change the playing field by increasing apprenticeship opportunities for women and non-binary musicians.

Frank Russell bassist and guitarist, is a native of Chicago. He started his music career early, playing drums, guitar and sax before switching to bass guitar at the age of 14. He has worked and recorded with The Spaniels, Dee Clark, Dee Dee Warwick, Freddie Hubbard, Ramsey Lewis, Bobby Irving (Miles Davis), Art Porter, Alphonse Mouzon, Red Holt, Mike Wolff (Arsenio Hall), Peter Erskine (Weather Report), Ken Chaney, Sugar Blue and Terry Lynn Carrington among others. Frank garnered first prize in the 1992 Hennessy Best of Chicago Jazz Search with Chicago pianist Ken Chaney. He has played many jazz festivals across the country, including the Newport Jazz Festival, the Telluride Jazz Festival, the Chicago Jazz Festival and many others. Critic Chuck Deggans writes “Russell does literally cover all basses through traditional, urban, South African, and Latin jazz arrangements. The dexterity of Russell is phenomenal in this recording session as he illustrates awesome control of his basses, and reveals a fluid creativity not commonly found among most bass players.”

Jeff Parker is recognized as one of contemporary music's most versatile and innovative electric guitarists and composers. With a prolific output characterized by musical ideas of angularity and logic, he creates works that explore and exploit the contrary relationships between tradition and technology, improvisation and composition, and the familiar and the abstract. An integral part of what has become known as “The Modern Chicago Sound”, he is a longtime member of the influential indie band Tortoise, and is also a founding member of Isotope 217 ̊ and Chicago Underground. A look at his extensive work as a collaborator and session musician offers a glimpse into Mr. Parker's diversity. This list includes: Andrew Bird, Meshell Ndegeocello, Joshua Redman, Toumani Diabate, George Lewis, , Nicole Mitchell, Makaya McCraven, Vijay Iyer, Yo La Tengo, Brian Blade, Jason Moran, Joey DeFrancesco, Nels Cline, Charles Earland, Ken Vandermark, Dave Douglas, Fred Anderson, and hundreds more. An associate member of Chicago's Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) since 1995, Parker was awarded the United States Artist's Fellowship in 2022.

Joel Ross draws inspiration for his layered expression from vital, intersecting scenes of his native Chicago. Imbibing nuanced traditions from improvised music hubs to the church, he embraces a range of gestural possibilities he'd begin refining in New York. After graduating from University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, Ross pursued a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Jazz Studies from The New School in downtown Manhattan. A highly sought collaborator now based in Brooklyn, Joel regularly performs across the country and around the world. During the pandemic, Ross expanded his artistry to include creative positions away from the bandstand, including podcast appearances for Christian McBride's “Live Wax” and Dave Douglas' “A Noise from the Deep.” The Art Center at Duck Creek in East Hampton invited him to curate an entire performance program featuring original works from Joel Ross and Parables, Maria Grand and Patricia Brennan. In 2020, John Zorn tapped Ross for authorship contributions to the ninth installment of his theory and practice Arcana series. In 2021, Ross joined the adjunct faculty at Manhattan School of Music and The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in NYC.

Marques Carroll was born into a musical family in St. Louis, and fell in love with the trumpet when he was only 8 years old. His grandfather worked with jazz legend Clark Terry who would become a major influence on the young musician. Marques has shared the stage with jazz powerhouses including Carmen Bradford, Dee Dee Bridgewater (Count Basie Band), Etienne Charles, Christian McBride, Jon Faddis, Meshell Ndegeocello, and Randy Weston (Chicago Jazz Ensemble). In addition to his prolific performing career, he is musical director for Chicago Jesuit Academy, and regularly holds clinics and master classes around the country. Marques is the leader of the Trumpet Summit and co-leader of the Chicago Soul Jazz Collective, and a permanent sub-member of The Count Basie Orchestra. Rooted in the tradition of Black American Music (BAM), Marques is consciously challenging norms of genres such as Blues, Funk, Soul, Neo-Soul, and Hip-Hop, expanding and pushing into new places of expression and mastery. Marques is co-founder of JMarq Records and is the leader of his self-titled quintet featured in both of his albums, The Ancestor's Call and Foundations released by JMarq Records.Sean Jones is a trumpeter, bandleader, composer, educator, and activist whose artistic vision has always been intertwined with music and spirituality. Wynton Marsalis offered him a permanent position as lead trumpeter of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, a post he held from 2004 until 2010. In 2015, Mr. Jones was tapped to become a member of the SFJAZZ Collective. During this time, he has managed to keep a core group of talented musicians together under his leadership, forming the foundation for groups that have produced and released eight recordings on Mack Avenue Records. His most recent is the 2017 release Sean Jones: Live from Jazz at the Bistro. Mr. Jones is an internationally recognized educator. He is president of the Jazz Education Network and holds the Richard and Elizabeth Case Chair in Jazz Studies at The John Hopkins University's Peabody Institute in Baltimore. As well as artistic Director for the NYO JAZZ Program of Carnegie Hall. Previously, he served as chair of the Brass department at Berklee College of Music in Boston.

Kopano is a Chicago based cultural worker who's preferred medium of communication is sound and movement. A musician by trade, Kopano has been performing for 8 years and dj'ing for 2. Seeing theirself in the legacy of Pan-Africanism, Kopano strives to connect their South African and native-Chicagoan roots through performance and collaboration. In 2017, they debuted their first political performance art piece "Black Women Spectra" at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. “BWS” is the first reflection in a forthcoming series that interrogates the consequences of an assumption-based reality. In 2022, Kopano received their music degree from Oberlin College and Conservatory, and studied abroad at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. As a 2022 recipient of the John Walt Foundation Scholarship, Kopano is on a personal journey to reintegrate the true purpose of artistry into community.

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