Overview Music Heritage is one sponsorship that covers the four free music festivals Chicago's Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) stages in Millennium Park each summer: the Chicago Blues Festival, the Chicago Gospel Music Festival, the Chicago House Music Festival and Conference, and the Chicago Jazz Festival. The Blues Festival is the world's largest free blues festival, and the Jazz Festival, held over Labor Day weekend, is the world's largest free jazz festival. One partner rides the whole run, from early June to early September. On site The Jay Pritzker Pavilion is the main stage for all four, with the Great Lawn spread out in front of it. The Blues Festival opens with a night at the Ramova Theatre in Bridgeport, then fills the park with side stages including the Mississippi Crossroads Stage, the Rosa's Lounge Stage and Wrigley Square. Gospel runs two evenings of choirs, contemporary gospel, hip-hop and house. The House festival pairs a conference at the Chicago Cultural Center with dance sets in the park, and the Jazz Festival adds programs at the Cultural Center and in neighborhoods across the city. Admission is free, and people bring blankets and chairs onto the lawn for the day. Audience Blues crowds skew older than at any other Millennium Park event, and many return each year. Gospel fans plan their visit weeks ahead, and for a large share it is their only trip to the park that year. House draws a local following plus fans from across the country. Jazz draws an older, more affluent crowd, many of them from out of town. Families with children turn up at all four. Talent and Influencers Past Blues Festival bills include Mavis Staples, Ray Charles, Chuck Berry, Koko Taylor, Etta James, Keith Richards and Christone "Kingfish" Ingram. The Jazz Festival has presented Herbie Hancock, Esperanza Spalding, Gregory Porter, Ramsey Lewis, Dianne Reeves and Cécile McLorin Salvant, and its most recent edition featured Robert Glasper and Dee Dee Bridgewater with Bill Charlap. Gospel has hosted The Winans, Donald Lawrence, Albertina Walker, Jonathan McReynolds and Chandler Moore, with Tasha Cobbs Leonard and Hezekiah Walker headlining most recently. Lineups for the coming summer are not yet announced. Track record The Jazz Festival has run on Labor Day weekend for more than four decades, and the Blues Festival began a few years later. DCASE credits Chicago as the birthplace of gospel and house, and both festivals present hometown pioneers next to national names. Brand presence Music Heritage is new, and the sponsor would be the only brand tied to all four festivals at once. Today each festival carries its own partners: Wells Fargo presents the Jazz Festival, Mississippi's tourism bodies and Rosa's Lounge host stages at Blues, and local radio stations serve as media partners. Sponsors build their own activations on park grounds under DCASE's permit and insurance process, and food and non-alcoholic sampling is approved case by case.