March 13, 2026
Herbie Hancock Plays for Select Audience—Including Architecture Students—at Crown Hall
Jazz legend Herbie Hancock paused in front of a concert grand piano in the center of Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture’s S. R. Crown Hall long enough to mention he wasn’t going to play “any particular tune, I’m just gonna noodle around,” before sitting down for a 15-minute performance before a packed and silent audience.
That was enough to prompt guests—including Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, and jazz singer Kurt Elling—to stand for applause at the peak of a fundraiser to help bring International Jazz Day to Chicago.
“Architecture is often called frozen music. Tonight’s music will be anything but frozen,” College of Architecture Dean and Rowe Family Endowed Chair Reed Kroloff told guests minutes before the March 11 performance.
Kroloff also related that, nearly 70 years ago in the exact spot where Hancock played, renowned composer, bandleader, and pianist Duke Ellington played for a College dance. Ellington later told Crown Hall architect and longtime College of Architecture leader Ludwig Mies van der Rohe—who was in the audience during that November 1957 event—that the building had the finest acoustics he’d ever experienced.
“It’s incredible that Herbie agreed to the same thing,” said event organizer Quintin Primo III, chairman and founder of Capri Investment Group, a Chicago-based real estate investment firm.
In addition to a small group of invited guests, more than 100 College of Architecture students, faculty, and staff, also witnessed the intimate concert. The event raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to support a month’s-worth of events leading up to International Jazz Day in Chicago, which is slated to take place on April 30, 2026, and will culminate with a concert at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
International Jazz Day was officially designated in 2011 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization “to highlight jazz and its diplomatic role of uniting people in all corners of the globe.” It has never been held in Chicago and has not been in the United States since 2016.
“International Jazz Day coming back to the U.S.—and to this spot that was critical to the development of jazz, literally under our feet, is incredible,” said Primo.
For more information on International Jazz Day, visit jazzday.com.