Chicago Jazz Community to Honor Geraldine de Haas

Chicago’s arts community will come together on November 4 at 7:00 p.m. at the Logan Center, 915 E. 60th Street, for a Musical Memorial Celebration honoring the life and legacy of Geraldine de Haas. The evening will celebrate de Haas’s extraordinary career as a vocalist, producer, presenter, mentor, and advocate whose decades of work helped shape Chicago’s jazz community. Performers and speakers include Tammy McCann, Orbert Davis, Miguel de La Cerna Trio, Bethany Pickens, Aisha de Haas, Darius de Haas, Howard Reich, Heather Ireland Robinson, and others. Through music and personal remembrance, the celebration will honor a woman whose commitment to making jazz accessible to broad audiences left a lasting mark on the cultural life of Chicago.

De Haas first came to Chicago in 1968 with her husband, bassist Edgar “Eddie” de Haas. She established a career as a vocalist, including performing internationally with her siblings Andy Bey and Salome Bey as Andy and the Bey Sisters, and later became deeply involved in Chicago’s theater scene, performing in national companies of “Hair” and “Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope.” In 1974, following the death of Duke Ellington, she helped organize a tribute concert in Grant Park that ultimately developed into the Chicago Jazz Festival, one of the city’s signature annual musical traditions. She also founded and led the South Shore Jazz Festival and, in 1981, founded Jazz Unites, Inc., an organization dedicated to expanding appreciation for jazz and using music as a means of education and cultural connection through concerts, educational programs, workshops, master classes, festivals, and opportunities for emerging and established artists.

De Haas died on July 28, 2026, at the age of 91. Her death was reported around the world, but especially by Chicago news organizations, which highlighted her decades-long contribution to the city’s jazz community and her role in helping establish the Chicago Jazz Festival. The November 4 celebration will bring together those who knew Geraldine personally and professionally, as well as members of the wider community whose lives were touched by her work. The evening will use music as its central language of remembrance, reflecting the art form to which she devoted so much of her life. For media inquiries, event information, or additional materials, contact Carolyn McClair, CMPR, at [email protected] or (212) 721-3341.