Arts & Entertainment
Geraldine de Haas, Longtime Jazz Patron Who Helped Start the Chicago Jazz Festival, Dies at 91
Video: Phil Ponce interviews Geraldine de Haas on “Chicago Tonight” on July 18, 2013.
Geraldine de Haas, a longtime promoter of Chicago’s jazz music scene who helped start what would later be known as the Chicago Jazz Festival, died last week, her family announced.
De Haas died of natural causes July 28 at Englewood Health Hospital in New Jersey. She was 91.
De Haas first moved to Chicago with her husband, Edgar, a bassist, in 1968. While raising a family the city, de Haas joined the Free Street Theater and performed in several stage productions, according to a news release.
De Haas started producing jazz events in the early 1970s.
When Duke Ellington died in 1974, she organized an Ellington tribute at Grant Park that later evolved into the Chicago Jazz Festival. The Ellington tribute — which de Haas argued should be moved from the South Side to downtown — brought together members of the jazz community from across the city.
“It should be downtown in Grant Park and invite the best musicians here in the city of Chicago, which meant that you had to have Black musicians as well as White musicians,” de Haas said about the event in a 2013 interview on “Chicago Tonight.” “You have to have them all because Duke Ellington was fantastic; he represented all of us who loved jazz.”
In 1980, de Haas earned a bachelor’s degree in music education from Chicago State University. A year later, she founded Jazz Unites, Inc., where she also served as its CEO and president. The nonprofit aimed to bring jazz to the public and encourage the genre as a form of cultural and personal expression, according to a news release.
De Haas produced and presented jazz festivals and performances, including the 1983 South Shore Jazz Festival, also known as the Jazz Fest Heritage Weekend. She also served as the director of performing arts and access programs for the Illinois Arts Council from 1983 to 1993, according to a news release.
“I wanted to concentrate on Chicago’s South Side, and it was important for people over there to understand this legacy of this incredible music that has been given to us by many of the African American musicians, and many great musicians,” de Haas said on “Chicago Tonight.” “It had to be exposed to the children, and particularly young people on Chicago’s South Side.”
De Haas was born Geraldine Wideman (later Geraldine Bey) in 1935 in Newark, New Jersey. She was a vocalist in the jazz group Andy and the Bey Sisters, along with her sister Salome and brother Andy. The group performed in the 1950s and ‘60s before the group eventually disbanded in 1967.
After spending more than 40 years in Chicago, de Haas and her husband moved back to New Jersey in 2013.
In an interview on “Chicago Tonight,” de Haas cited health challenges that both she and her husband had, along with wanting to be closer to their children, as reasons for their decision to move. Her husband died in 2022.
“I always want to have a hand in jazz, wherever I am,” de Haas said before her move. “Wherever I am, I will try to let it reach the pinnacles that it deserves because it still needs to be recognized fully by this country.”
De Haas is survived by her son, singer/actor Darius de Haas; her daughter, singer/actress Aisha de Haas; her son-in-law, Kyle Rudy; and numerous nieces and nephews, according to a news release.
Contact Eunice Alpasan: [email protected]
WTTW News arts coverage is supported by the JCS Arts, Health & Education Fund of the DuPage Foundation.
