Pretty old thread. Anybody got any more recent data?? 

I missed your message. I did attend. I've never seen a bass saxophone played in person before, much less by a very elegantly attired 85 year old.

I thought the festival was great this year. The revelatory concerts (for me) were Isaiah Collier's opening night Coltrane tribute concert, which I thought was incredible, inspired and inspiring but not imitative (he played Central Park West, My Favorite Things, Giant Steps, Transition, Lonnie's Lament, and But Not for Me), and Either/Orchestra's Ethio-Jazz concert (with two Ethiopian guest vocalists) on the last day at the Bijou, which was as powerful a concert as I've ever seen. In all, I saw eighteen concerts and attended one talk (the Frenchman who is responsible for the Ethiopiques reissue series had flown in from France to explain the history). The others that I liked the best were: two concerts involving Carlos Nino (Openness Trio and another trio with Surya Botofasina and Aaron Shaw), Darius Jones Trio, Brian Marsella Trio, Jeff Parker Expansion Trio, Julian Lage Quartet, Marquis Hill Blacktet with Gerald Clayton, and Miles Okazaki's Trickster. I also really enjoyed four non-jazz concerts: Hania Rani's wild keyboard electronica set in the Greyhound and three Indian classical concerts  (Purbayan Chatterjee (sitar), Kunal Gunjal (santoor), and Saraswathi Ranganathan (veena). The last musician who lives in Chicago cracked me up when she started playing blues guitar riffs on the veena (predecessor instrument to the sitar).  

"Top level scientists" apparently includes junior team staff, non-scientists, secretaries and retirees. Anything for a clickbait headline.