Hey Nonny Turns the Spotlight All the Way Up: Inside the Nation’s Largest Women’s Jazz Festival
In a music world that still treats women in jazz like a footnote instead of a headline, Hey Nonny keeps doing something quietly radical: giving the mic entirely to them and letting the music speak at full volume.
This January, the Arlington Heights restaurant and live music room returns with its 4th Annual Hey Nonny Women’s Jazz Festival, running January 6–10, 2026, cementing its reputation as the largest festival in the United States dedicated exclusively to women in jazz. Across five nights, the festival brings 14 women-led ensembles to Hey Nonny’s intimate listening room, transforming the venue into a pressure cooker of swing, experimentation, legacy, and future-facing sound.
Hey Nonny has become one of Chicagoland’s most vital cultural outposts by betting on experience over spectacle. The room is close, the food is serious, and the artists are never treated as background noise. This festival, now a winter anchor for Chicago-area jazz fans, is the purest expression of that philosophy.
“This festival is deeply personal to us,” says co-owner Chip Brooks, who programs the event alongside the Hey Nonny Women’s Jazz Committee, led by jazz academic Karuna Maddava. “Every year, our artists bring an incredible range of styles to the stage in ways that truly connect with the audience. Creating singular, joy-filled experiences like this is exactly what Hey Nonny is all about.”
Opening Night Sets the Tone
The festival opens Tuesday, January 6, with a one-two punch that captures both jazz tradition and its restless evolution. Somaluna unites four of Chicago’s most commanding vocalists into a rare, harmony-rich showcase, while the Tomeka Reid Quartet, led by the MacArthur Fellow cellist and composer, brings an internationally revered ensemble into a room that holds every note accountable.
Global Voices, Local Legends
Throughout the week, the lineup flows between generations, geographies, and approaches. Tokyo-born, Chicago-based keyboardist Hana Fujisaki brings global textures to Wednesday’s keyboard-focused evening, while bass icon Marlene Rosenberg, whose résumé includes Nancy Wilson, Stan Getz, and Roy Hargrove, leads a trio grounded in deep groove and compositional authority.
Thursday belongs to Carmani Edwards, whose Carmani Fest highlights Chicago’s next wave, alongside Honey Noir, a genre-bending trio reshaping what modern jazz can sound like without asking permission.
Premieres, Preservation, and the Future
Friday afternoon honors jazz history with vocalist and preservationist Christy Bennett, while Friday night turns toward the unknown. New works from Stacy McMichael and an Afro-electronic world premiere from DownBeat Rising Star Jovia Armstrong push the festival beyond nostalgia and into experimentation.
Saturday’s finale stretches from student showcases inspired by Terri Lyne Carrington’s New Standards, through happy hour performances, to a closing night that pairs Chicago institution Joanie Pallatto with an electrifying ensemble led by Tromblau.
More Than a Show
Tickets start at $10 for students and $35 for cabaret seating, with the option to elevate the experience through Hey Nonny’s $45 three-course tasting menu, turning each night into a full sensory collaboration between kitchen and stage.
At a time when jazz venues are disappearing and attention spans are shrinking, Hey Nonny is doing the opposite: slowing things down, narrowing the focus, and giving women in jazz the space they’ve always deserved.
Tickets and full festival details are available now at heynonny.com.
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