CULTURE
JAZZ, HIP-HOP OR ELECTRONIC, JAMIE BREIWICK LEADS THE WAY
Photo by Leo Moscaro. (Jamie, trumpet; John Tate, bassist; Matt Wilson, drummer.)
BY KEVIN LYNCH
J
azz artist Jamie Breiwick's voice and vision have steadily grown, like rippling concentric circles, since he first caught the attention of fellow musicians, critics and the public. The wind of his trumpet blowing plays a factor, but the wavelike depths arose from his extraordinary knowledge and honoring of the modern jazz tradition, while finding places in contemporary pop vernaculars for his voice and realizing the wellsprings of his own creative identity. That analogy seems apt as his seminal inspiration was Miles Davis, who shaped the tides of jazz time for decades, with an uncanny, lyrical and impressionistic sensibility, even as funky as he could get. “I had a Miles t-shirt in high school that I wore constantly,” Breiwick recalls. “The breadth of music he made is really staggering, whether bebop, free, rock, fusion, electronic, experimental, pop, hip-hop. He really blazed a lot of trails and left us with a lifetime of inspiration.” Right now, Breiwick ranks among the four or five most important jazz musicians in Wisconsin and, among them, the youngest one on a still-rising arc of creative possibility. His prolific recorded output includes work with De La Buena and the influential 25year band Clamnation. The pandemic threw many artists askew, but Breiwick pressed full-speed ahead, with voluminous recording and releasing on his own B-Side Recordings label.
Album cover by Jamie Breiwick.
CLEAN COMPOSITIONS Breiwick’s graphic design talents sped this output. He does all his own album covers (and those of others) with an imaginative but clean, post-1960s Blue Note Records compositional style. He just published a book of his jazz cover designs concurrently with an emblematic album, KASE + Klassik Live at the Opera House. His jazz-hip-hop-electronics trio, with bassist John Christensen and turntablist knowsthetime, joined Klassik, perhaps the region’s most musically gifted improv hip-hop singer-song maker, who also plays keyboards and saxophone. KASE logically expands Breiwick’s creative ripples into exploring “sonic landscapes”— Miles ahead, atmospheric, wonder-inducing. Breiwick’s recorded and group projects have probed groundbreaking jazzers, including Davis, Thelonious Monk, Ornette Coleman, and world-music traveler Don Cherry. He’s also played and recorded transcribed Davis solos for two Hal Leonard playalong books, among six he’s recorded. He values innovative contemporaries like Jason Moran, Ambrose Akinmusire and Nicholas Payton, “an incredible trumpet player and musical conceptualist,” and “a thought leader and outspoken BAM (Black American Music) advocate.” Breiwick also teaches music at Prairie School, near Racine.
Photo by Leo Moscaro. (Jamie, trumpet; John Tate, bassist; Matt Wilson, drummer.)
60 | SHEPHERD EXPRESS
Photos courtesy of Jamie Breiwick.
