May 30, 2024 - August 15, 2024 | Thursday Nights | Doors Open at 6 p.m., Performance at 7 p.m.
Join us on the Peoria Riverfront Museum's Sun Plaza for a summer music series featuring local and regional jazz artists, inspired by Preston Jackson's Bronzeville to Harlem: An American Story . This series event will take place every Thursday from May 30, 2024 to August 15, 2024, featuring artists from the Chicago area as well as regional and local musicians. Get down and boogie with us!
Cash bar available.
Ticket prices
Members- $10
Non-Members- $15
Student- $7
Visionary Society-$7
Ticket price includes admission to Preston Jackson's Bronzeville to Harlem: An American Story.
Schedule of events
Thursday, May 30, 2024 | Central Illinois Jazz Orchestra
Central Illinois Jazz Orchestra, founded in 1998, is a seventeen-piece big band committed to keeping the big jazz sound alive. Originally called the New Millennium Big Band, the CIJO is made up of professional and semi-professional musicians from the heart of Illinois that include music educators, business professionals, and full-time performers. The group plays classic jazz charts from Count Basie to Stan Kenton and from Duke Ellington to Maynard Ferguson.
Get tickets HERE
Thursday, June 20, 2024 | Soul Message
Soul Message Band is founded on the enduring partnership of Chris Foreman, the Chicago-based and nationally celebrated Hammond B3 Jazz Organist, and the always solid drummer, Greg Rockingham, aka “The Rock.” Greg and Chris have a 25-year history of collaboration, including groups like the Deep Blue Organ Trio. Mr. Rockingham and Mr. Foreman have an unmistakable chemistry that has taken them from Chicago to Jazz Clubs and Arenas around the world as both headliners and as an opening group for Steely Dan. The band adds Chicago veteran guitarist, Lee Rothenberg on guitar.
Get tickets HERE
Thursday, July 18, 2024 | Preston Jackson and Friends with Judy Page
Artist Preston Jackson flexes his creative skills in more ways than one, performing jazz and blues guitar accompanied by Peoria vocal legend, Judy Page. Page's smoky, organic tones and Jackson's live-wire guitar are not to be missed. See Preston Jackson's masterwork Bronzeville to Harlem: An American Story in the museum's galleries with the artist live and on site. Preston will be in the galleries at 6:30 p.m., before the music begins.
Get tickets HERE
Thursday, August 15, 2024 | Imperial Boxmen
Riding through “an international confluence of downtempo, jazz, and funk”, Imperial Boxmen features a power ensemble of heavyweight Chicago players. After years of underground exposure in Chicago as a niche acid jazz trio (made up of Ford, Austin, and Plotkin) focused on recreating the songs sampled in 90’s hip hop, the Boxmen sound gradually moved to original music under the direction of keyboardist Kevin Ford. Their sound sits firmly in the jazz underground of Chicago, drawing influences from instrumental hip-hop, 70s jazz-funk, and currents of afrobeat and ethiopiques music. The band name, Imperial Boxmen, paints an image of the ‘in-house’ musical ensemble in the court of a god-emperor—partly inspired by the era of Ethiopian jazz in the 60s and 70s under Emperor Haile Selassi: the soundtrack of a mythical future utopia.
Get tickets HERE
Sponsored by Friends of Bronzeville to Harlem
