Hey folks, now’s the time to see a film about a rarely filmed artist: Wes Montgomery.
It’s titled Wes Bound:The Genius of Wes Montgomery.
Given his influences as a guitarist you’ll know a handful of his style when he grabs a chord and churns up siome momentum. The harmonies may drive you to a rhyhmic frenzy of good feeling, if you let them. It’s partly because the chords are wapped in alluring melody. Milwaukee’s own Manty Ellis is one player who absorbed Wes like a sponge.
Same is true of Pat Metheny, Bill Frisell, Larry Coryell, and Pat Martino, among others.
Wes Bound producer/director Kevin Finch and Robert Montgomery interviewed dozens of musicians, family members, and friends for the documentary, including platinum record-selling artist George Benson, rock and roll guitar icon Slash, 20-time Grammy winner Pat Metheny, Russell Malone, Mimi Fox, Grammy winner Lee Ritenour, Steely Dan co-founder Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, Grammy-winning rock guitarist Eric Johnson, second-generation Hampton family musician Pharez Whitted, bassist Larry Ridley (formerly of Indianapolis), Wes’s touring drummer Billy Hart, and others.
In addition to the interviews, the film also features the music of Wes and his famed brothers, bassist Monk Montgomery and pianist and vibraphone player Buddy Montgomery, who spent many years in Milwaukee.
Methey expressed well the ineffabe but palpable qualities of Wes’s playing:
“The whole idea of being an improvising musician for me sometimes gets a little clouded up with the nuts and bolts of it. But at its core it’s about storytelling and Wes for me, above everything else, you could always follow it – he had this this amazing ability to describe very complex ideas in ways that were so clear and so well backed up with spirit and soul. But also if you just look at it in a linear way, he almost never played any idea that didn’t have two or three – sometimes more – responses to what the idea was.”
Following the film you’ll hear a live performance from the UWM Jazz Ensemble Repertoire Combo, doing Montomery material, and directed by drummer Dave Bayles.
Restless searcher Jamie Breiwick wisely knows jazz history also shines forward. He leads a hip-hop jazz group, KASE, but also another dedicated to bop genius Thelonious Monk’s repertoire. Another is the fluid “book” of innovative trumpeter/pioneering world musician Don Cherry.
Several other performance projects ebb and flow through his prolific talents, including recently the daring paired-solo-sets at the Jazz Gallery Center for the Arts with powerhouse East Coast trombonist Joe Fielder. He’s even written a tune that is a luminous soundtrack point for an adventure/thriller film, Deep Woods.
That suggests some of the range of his interests. But also how the horn player/conceptualist understands that American music’s lineage casts profoundly forward. Or, you might call it the ever-flowing nourishment of “culture currents,” especially those where vernaculars, musical and literary, “speak” to audiences of the past, present and future.
Reviving the album live — Breiwick’s artistic breakthrough project — will take place this Thursday, Dec. 5. It was recorded in this very hallowed Milwaukee jazz space, known for decades as the Jazz Estate (which can apparently now be rented out for musical events, though no longer a regular jazz joint).
I was honored to write the album liner notes (included a few paragraphs below) based on the recording. Spirits: Live at the Jazz Estate was the first jazz album I’ve heard to cover Taylor Swift, back in 2012, before she became a Beatle-esque four-artists-in-one phenomenon (comparable talent is another story).
There’s also a Death Cab for Cutie cover, as well as one by Wayne Shorter, jazz master of visionary obliquity who, after Monk, might be the most-covered modern jazz composer. Also you’ll find a tune by Breiwick’s Wisconsin-born contemporary, trumpeter Philip Dizak (a Milwaukeean now East Coast-based), plus originals by Breiwick and two band members.
The album closes perfectly with the incomparably timeless Duke Ellington, the apt and poetically titled “Sunset and the Mockingbird.”
Jamie Breiwick. Photo by Leonardo Moscaro
What’s more, Breiwick may be as gifted a graphic artist as he is a musician. His daringly stylish album covers, which boldly extend the Blue Note design tradition, adorn scores of albums and have been used by such notable jazz labels as Verve, Palmetto, Sunnyside, Candid and Mack Avenue.
In this case, he honored the club’s legacy by originally displaying the red door entrance to The Estate on his original retro-Blue Note typeface cover (see below). Later he decided to capture the spirit of the album by re-imagining the cover into one of his most inspired visual creations (at top).
Here, Spirits soars into the stratosphere. The highly stylized title typeface, to me, suggests aeronautic striving, as a gaggle of birds frolic through the sky buoyed by a painterly cloud floor. The whole effect carries a faintly mystical aura — the space between humanity’s striving to transcend gravity and the bird’s natural gift to do so.
The new cover is so elegantly striking I might’ve found a different cast for the liner notes I wrote for the album. Kind of like, all his knowledge shines forward in time, as far as the light can reach.
The quartet Thursday is the same as the recording except, instead of Tony Barba, acclaimed Chicago-based tenor saxophonist Dustin Laurenzi will perform (his own musical unearthing includes a recording reviving “The Music of Moondog”). Laurenzi has also recently toured with Grammy-winning indie-rock artist Bon Iver.
There’s no guarantee though that, like most jazz musicians, Breiwick doesn’t stray from the implied script of the album’s tunes.
As it is, here are those original notes to give you a sense of the music to be played:
Jamie Breiwick – Spirits: Live at the Jazz Estate (BluJazz).
Open the door on the album cover and you enter the Jazz Estate, a Milwaukee club that exemplifies a venue that nurtures modern straight-ahead jazz and makes money at it. This recording was made there one night, even if the program has the well-considered sense of purpose of a studio recording.
The melody of the opening “Gig Shirt” has a slightly skewed trumpet-saxophone harmony, recalling Ornette Coleman’s classic/radical quartet, which certainly influenced the album’s piano-less instrumentation. The theme bodes well for a musical departure, especially in its expansive rising last notes.
This journey’s departure mean’s arrival at many musical ports, including some adapted pop-rock. “I Will Follow You into the Dark” by Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard, is a mournful yet oddly resolute melody. Breiwick’s muted trumpet sounds playful, as if he’s wooing a young woman with a joke. The rhythm players burble along in the same coy spirit, lifting the interpretation’s insouciance and the band ends with an exquisite exhalation.
“Safe and Sound,” by country-pop artist Taylor Swift, is another strong and pliable melody that tenor saxophonist Tony Barba builds from close, pinprick-sharp variations until he unfurls some Joe Henderson-like flag-waving. Breiwick’s own “Little Bill” is a funky, amiable tune that honors the memory of his Grandfather Bill and also refers to the cartoon of the same name, which Breiwick’s children love to watch. “Dad” adopts a slightly gruff tone and Barba is almost flippantly offhanded, befitting the sit-com mood.
This band has a svelte-but-sure grip on the harmonic and rhythmic tension of “Capricorn,” a Wayne Shorter theme that seems to move in two directions at once while flowing as a seamless melody — characteristic of Shorter’s ineffable compositional genius. If that sounds like a chops-busting practice-room etude, “Capricorn” rises like an indelibly hummable melody. The band swings hard out of the gate, as Barba plunges in with pithy Shorterisms — slanting shards, open-throated exhortations and quotes of the sorcerer-like theme. Breiwick shifts gears, then creeps into a softly growling, splattered tone that recalls Don Cherry. He’s clearly finding his own forward-pushing place in the trumpet tradition. Bassist Tim Ipsen steps in like a heady middleweight contender, with a sly combination of punchy harmonic intervals.
The aphoristically titled “Walk through Daydreams, Sleep through Nightmares” reflects Breiwick’s magnanimous depth as a member of the jazz community. He leads two jazz bands, including a more pop rock-oriented one called Choir Fight. He’s also an educator, organizer and all-around go-getter, having co-founded Milwaukee Jazz Vision, a musician-run organization that promotes the local jazz scene, especially with an excellent website: mkejazzvision.org. This tune is by one of Breiwick’s own former students, Philip Dizack, a fast-rising young trumpeter of uncommon lyrical strength and compositional maturity. Breiwick acknowledges that crafting a songfully expressive melodic line is a primary concern of his. “I believe the album’s aesthetic intent points to a depth of feeling in the music,” he says. “Beyond technique, which is obviously hugely important, emotional communication is a priority.”
“Walk” opens with swelling mallet rolls and cymbals. The two horns resound like one voice, or mind, experiencing a revelation. Then everyone pulls back, as if in a slight state of awe, to contemplate the implications of the eureka moment. One imagines a lightning bolt having struck the narrative consciousness right at its precipitous leap from daydream to nightmare. It recalls John Coltrane’s more pensive lyrical moments in his late years, when he pushed the spiritual-empowerment envelope like the shaman Dr. King might have met on that windswept mountaintop.
The program follows appropriately with Barba’s title tune “Spirits.” A simple rising interval, extrapolated and harmonized, seems like a wisp of a theme, yet these men plumb its modality as if climbing the branches of a majestic tree. It stands like a spirit, inviting as it is inherently challenging for the earthbound.
Consequently the closing tune, “Sunset and the Mockingbird,” is also apt, from the pen of Duke Ellington, a timeless jazz presence. This is Duke’s indigo mood, and Barba proves he can fabricate a short story whole cloth from textured whole notes, while Breiwick is a mockingbird with genuine feelings. He evokes Ellington trumpeter Cootie Williams’ muted sorrow, as an elegy to whatever the sunset bade farewell, something to cherish, and live up to.
Spirits demonstrates extraordinary range and vision from this new jazz generation, and delivers on promise as if tapped into a musical wellspring flowing through their veins.
— Kevin Lynch
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Lynch has written for Down Beat, The Village Voice, CODA, American Record Guide, The Chicago Tribune, The Milwaukee Journal, The Cap Times, and other publications, and blogs at Culture Currents (Vernaculars Speak).
Lynne Arriale Trio will perform at Bar Centro, 808 E. Center St., Thursday, March 14 at 8 p.m., $25
Lynne Arriale continues to grapple with the world, and uplifts it, with her immense gifts and passion. The pianist-composer has proven herself among the most socially and politically engaged jazz musicians working today. On her new album Being Human, she stays true to her piano’s voice whereas previously employing a vocalists to sing an iconic Bob Dylan song to powerful effect. Now she returns to her hometown, Milwaukee, where she studied, and grew as an artist before striking out for larger pastures.
On Being Human she continues her practice of dedicating certain tunes to people of notable political import. Thus, we’re urged to contemplate such people as environmental activist Gret Thunberg, Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai, Khrystyna Lopatenko, chief nurse at Kharkiv Oblast Hospital, the Ukrainian people and, more broadly, humankind and “those of faith.”
Her liner notes specify how she sees such people as meaningful and worthy of our consideration. And yet her work allows us the freedom to respond in any way we want as per the stimulus of her trio’s work, which fills the auditory senses as much as a piano trio can. The piano trio is a specific art form honed to heights of mastery by The Bill Evans Trio and Arriale carries on from such lofty standards. She mines in an affirmative jazz without lyrics but so full of spirit and both refined and rough-hewn musical gemstones gritted with shards of life to appreciate and feel. For example, Courage (for the Ukraine people) delves into the weight needed to muster that emotion and strength with a big Tyner-ish piano bass beneath muscular yet lyrical trappings. The theme’s minor-ish mood delivers the emotion instilled in “courage.”
No social cause is more pressing today than that of Ukraine, “remaining unbowed while resisting a vastly more powerful enemy, they stand in solidarity with their military forces, even while enduring the horrors and hardships of war,” writes Arriale. “Persistence” is powered by Arriale’s meaty McCoy Tyner influence, thundering along, raining fourth intervals, clearly inspired by Yousafzai, the youngest person to ever win the Nobel Peace Prize, having survived The Taliban’s attempt to assassinate her.
One of the most intriguing tunes, “Curiosity,” defers from affirmation, bristles with tension and release, thick, piquant chords, and tight harmonies between her and bassist Alon Near, even atonal lines.
Though she is most typically a finely-crafting player with an innate sense of lyricism, a tune like “Soul” digs down into the muddy blues groove of a trio driving a layered and danceable pulse.
You can help but sense how far Arriale travels musically to discover the width and depth of human determination and courage in a world ever ready in defiance.
Except during the swing era, jazz has almost always had to play the survivor’s game. The seminal American art form migrates, like small, hungry herds of mammalian musical genius – and, of course, at least one genius “Bird” — incessantly wandering urban savannahs for watering amenable holes that usually lubricate patrons with at least coffee drinks as they dig the sounds.
Milwaukee’s no different. Accordingly, three self-consciously hip neighborhoods in this city have sustained the music to varying degrees, along with a smattering of venues in the near-north side Harambee and Bronzeville neighborhoods.
However, the East Side’s long-standing Jazz Estate has largely abdicated it’s nominal attraction, leaving that neighborhood a relatively arid region for live jazz — ironically given the Estate new identity as “specialty drink bar.”
The most conspicuous jazzy neighborhood, in terms of an organized presence, has been the southside’s Bay View which annually hosts the large, one-day Bay View Jazz Festival. This successful endeavor is built along the festival’s backbone, Kinnickinnick Avenue, a promenade of quirky and fascinating storefronts, galleries, bars and music spaces.
Now, the third hip neighborhood, Riverwest, is trumpeting its “look-at-me” moment. Three music venues on Center Street are teaming up for the first Riverwest Jazz Fest, this Friday night at The Jazz Gallery Center for the Arts, Bar Centro, and Company Brewing.
The fest lineup (below) is colorfully diverse and headlined by two-time Grammy-winning trumpeter Brian Lynch. Another notable act is the fast-rising band Heirloom.
Heirloom
The venue with the most auspicious history is the Jazz Gallery Center for the Arts, located in the same space originally occupied by the Milwaukee Jazz Gallery which presented “a dazzling lineup of many of the most significant musicians in jazz history,” notes one of the fest’s organizers, trumpeter-bandleader-recording artist Jamie Breiwick. “With great respect for these pioneers of jazz, contemporary jazz isn’t an art form that recycles the past, but a dynamic evolving collaboration of inventive musicians that mirrors the present while creating the new future.” He invites patrons to “be a part of this new future with the first ever Riverwest Jazz Fest.”
The new fulcrum among the three venues that’s now offering jazz most consistently is the stylishly intimate Bar Centro, located kitty corner from the larger Company Brewing space.
All three venues are on Center Street within a couple blocks of each other, so there’s no excuse to not make the rounds, and support all three. The festival is free admission, but donations will be welcome as will be offerings to tip jars for the performing groups.
Here’s the Riverwest Jazz Fest lineup:
5:30 PM – New Orleans-style March with the Big Style Brass Band from Jazz Gallery to Company Brewing
Jazz Gallery Center for the Arts (926 E Center St)
6 PM – Jazz Flux
8 PM – The Erotic Adventures of the Static Chicken
This stunning album amounts to an artist replanting in a profoundly fertile motherlode of his evolution, by reinterpreting the material of his very first album. The harvest is a quantum artistic leap. Chicago-native Hill is already established as one of the most talented and resourceful trumpeter-composers in jazz. Here he assembles a group of band leaders (several Blue Note label artists) and the quality quotient spikes. And it’s virtually all performed live in concert, a testament to the high art of the improviser (A series of studio-recorded a cappella solo pieces allows each of the sextet’s sidemen to to stand up and speak his peace.).
The floating, portentous “Intro” arrests our attention, and the ensuing “Law & Order” unfurls waves a of witness, drama and testament. Tenor saxophonist Walter Smith III enters a quietly enchanting storyteller but inevitably lifts us to cathartic cries of betrayal of justice, of true law and order. Vibist Joel Ross and pianist James Francies suggest, in their heavily populated lines, the bustle of the hoi polloi, and the pianist especially conveys a boiling tension in his hurtling momentum surges. If you haven’t heard him, Francies is a revelation, perhaps even if you have. To me, his linear speed doesn’t feel gratuitous or showy, rather it is breathtaking – burning with purpose, like a meteor striving for an explosive destiny. At other times, it’s as if his profuse ideas are spilling out over the edges of a sentence. This is music you feel in your bones, your whole being, such is its insinuating power.
Marquis Hill live. Courtesy mobile twitter.com
On “The Believer” everyone steps out hot and gives it up, as believers in, if nothing else, their extraordinary collective power which, by compounding exponentially, suggests a pipeline to some higher power. New Gospel, indeed. The tune exemplifies Hill’s compositional gifts, crafting edge-of-the-precipice pathways for improvs, suspended by oddly beguiling melodies. He won jazz’s greatest performance honor, The Thelonious Monk International Competition in 2014, underscoring his promise, now fully realized. 1
He’s admittedly out of the hard-bop blues tradition of Lee Morgan but deepened by expressive textures suggesting the influence of fellow Chicago brass avant-avatar Wadada Leo Smith, and aspects of many great trumpeters between. One can easily drink deeply from this album purely on the artistic virtuosity – throughout drummer Kendrick Scott bristles and flares like a string of artfully controlled fireworks. Yet there’s a cumulative demonstration of a spiritual mine, which has only strengthened in repose, replenished to fuel the powers of endurance, defiance, and resolution in a world seemingly out to get the already-disenfranchised American everyman, and woman.
Nova Czarnecki, “Return to Me, ” oil painting, $4500
Heretofore, I’ve refrained from reviewing an art show that I am participating in. However, I’ll simply announce, with a bit of comment, this is the last week to see Feather, Fur, Scale and Tail at the Jazz Gallery Center for the Arts, 926 E. Center St. Milwaukee. The show runs through Saturday, June 18. This delightful celebration and exploration of animals is ingenious, diverse, colorful and textural, and rich in symbolism and beauty. Yet it is not without acknowledging the darkness that shadows the animal world from within, and from without, the perpetual threat of humans.
It includes one of a series of pastel and ink drawings I have made, inspired by Herman Melville’s epic novel Moby-Dick. The one on exhibit depicts a scene in the first of the novel’s three climactic chapters, “The Chase-The First Day.” The image is titled “Ishmael Intuits the End from the Crows Nest.” The book’s narrator Ishmael is visible in the far background, at the top of the ship, as the whaling boat with Captain Ahab and Ishmael’s friend, first harpoonist Queequeg, approach The White Whale in the foreground.
Kevin Lynch, “Ishmael Intuits the End from the Crow’s Nest.” pastel and ink. Not for Sale
But the show is filled with excellent work: from the lovely gestural simplicity of a blackbird sitting on a branch in Carol Rode-Curley’s watercolor-like pastel, “Resting Raven,” to John-Mark Klapperich’s complex visual jokes — wall assemblages of metal objects transformed into animals. Among the most vivid actual encounters with an animal is “Sweet Pea,” Mary Lee Agnew’s photo capturing the ever-elusive fox, with ears so large you imagine him a winged mythical creature, caught for a fleeting moment, amid wind-blown leaps of prairie grass. (All pictured below)
More myth (as in artful truth-telling) seems to reside in, for me, a true highlight — Nova Czarnecki’s large (48” x 60”) oil painting “Return to Me” (at top). This seems a (self?) portrait of an earth mother dwelling in watery depths and attracting creatures from the air, the land and the very currents wherein she sits with a mystical regality.
“Thar she blows!” the cry comes from high up in the crow’s nest. “Thar she blows, a hump like a snow hill! It is Moby Dick!”
Feminizing all whales is part of the romance of the high seas. This she is really a he, the great White Whale who’s hunted monomaniacally by Captain Ahab in Herman Melville’s profoundly precient and symbolically pregnant masterpiece, Moby-Dick or, The Whale.
Those who’ve read this blog over the years may be aware of the precipitous esteem I hold for this extraordinary book. It has inspired me to write a novel about its author, somewhat forestalled by a myriad of circumstances, but forthcoming in due time.
This is a book that an artist of some repute whom I know aptly characterized as “the first postmodern novel” — published in 1851! It might also be the most critically commented-upon work of fiction in modern history, and the most widely referenced in popular culture, certainly among books that are not often actually read.
It has also inspired the visual artist in me.
So I’ve undertaken a series of pastel drawings with Moby Dick as my motif. And one of the perhaps more successful of these will soon be on display in an art exhibit at the Jazz Gallery Center for the arts.
The exhibit is announced in this poster, though one correction the opening reception’s time has een changed to 5 to 7 p.m. Saturday:
The exhibit will include Linocut Print | Sculpture | Comic-Book Illustration | Photography | Assemblage Box-Making | Encaustic | Pastels | Screen Print | Painting | Digital Drawing
This event has brought me to the realization I should have a digital copy of this pastel professionally made. My apologies for the poorly depicted image at top. But you get the idea from my hand-held photo. I hope it strikes your fancy or interest enough to visit the opening or ensuing gallery days of this promising show.
Here’s an image of another artwork in the show, a block print by Jay Arpin.
Linneman’s Riverwest Inn. Photo by Michael Burmesch, courtesy The Shepherd Express.
Since the 1980s, Riverwest has moved like the river it borders—a place of restless culture and commingling social currents. Literary, artsy Woodland Pattern, opened in 1980, remains Riverwest’s signature cultural center, along with Linneman’s Riverwest Inn, a music venue open since 1993, which has especially helped spawn the careers of local singer-songwriters, including Christopher Porterfield and The Record Company’s Chris Vos.
Center Street now has about six music and arts venues, including Company Brewing and The Jazz Gallery Center for the Arts, which re-imagines the celebrated 1980s Milwaukee Jazz Gallery. Neighbors recently bought the historic multi-purpose crossroads Polish Falcon Bowl, a hearty-spirited nexus of community activity for decades, including The Riverwest Follies.
The Riverwest Investment Cooperative recently purchased the Polish Falcon Bowl (above) to keep it viable for the community. Courtesy Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
I’ve lived here most of my adult life, with an interval in Madison. In a sense I never left—much of Madison is culturally and politically comparable to Riverwest. In 1973, the Eastside Housing Action Committee joined Madison activists to rent a Locust Street storefront for a Milwaukee chapter of the Wisconsin Alliance, a statewide socialist organization.
This alternative publication’s predecessor, TheBugle American, resided in Riverwest until 1979 and the Crazy Shepherd found its way to the neighborhood 40 years ago. Another primary socio-political entity, Outpost Natural Foods, remains “the real heart of the counterculture west of the river,” Riverwest historian Tom Tolan writes. Now a successful regional chain, Outpost’s membership-and-volunteerism system sparked its growth—once oriented to “revolution,” now towards community and personal health.
Black Husky Brewing. Courtesy blackhuskybrewing.com
Milwaukee-style commercial success stories in Riverwest include Lakefront Brewery and Black Husky Brewing, as well as the restaurants Cafe Corazon, Wonderland, Big Daddy’s Barbeque and Soul Food, the slightly gourmet Nessum Dorma, Riverwest Filling Station, Cafe Centro, Dino’s MKE,and the carry-out food services, Scardina Specialties meats and deli, Shwarma King and Sticky Rice. Among the most colorful Riverwest retailers is Fischberger’s Variety, self-described as “Milwaukee’s punk-rock palace for gifts,” brims with stylish and witty toys, gifts, offbeat greeting cards, and knitting products. And Burke Candy remains, with always-tantalizing retail shop offerings. All these places are worthwhile.
Fischberger’s Variety Store on Holton Street. Courtesy onmilwaukee.com
A mark of the neighborhood’s deep-grained culture is Moberg Piano Sales and Service on Keefe Avenue, plum full of real acoustic pianos of all kinds.
In time, the neighborhood shifted politically, from the radically driven ESHAC to community-growth values, while remaining strongly left-leaning and bohemian. Witness the Peace Action Center, The Riverwest Artists Association, The Riverwest Neighborhood Association, community-oriented radio station WXRW, Riverwest Food Pantry and a vital arm of Milwaukee Riverkeepers environmental activists. The new Daily Bird may not replace the former Fuel Café’s punk-rock vitality. However, two indie recording studios recently opened.
Another Riverwest distinction: It now boasts the first two designated “bicycle boulevards” in Milwaukee: at E. Wright Street and N. Fratney Street (where I live). These streets have speed bumps each block and car traffic is limited. New curb bump-outs limit sharp car turns at intersections, and make pedestrian crossings shorter. A traffic circle was added to the Wright and Fratney Street intersection. Traffic circles are intended to allow traffic to flow through intersections slowly and efficiently, without requiring a full stop on either side. Bikers rejoice and roll, of course. And I now see neighbors walking their dogs right down the middle of Fratney Street.
Riverwest remains arguably the city’s most diverse and alternative-culture neighborhood, defying the city’s notorious segregation. Gentrification never infiltrated, despite condo development on bordering Commerce Street. Mortgages and rents remain moderate and median household income is $44,820, compared to the nation’s average of $62,843. A notably working-class population remains, with 39% holding a high-school degree or less, compared to the nation’s 30 to 35 percent working class. Historical ethnicities are Polish and Puerto Rican—a neighbor’s flagpole flies Puerto Rican and American colors year-round, and up the street is bi-lingual elementary La Escuela Fratney. Riverwest’s racial make-up is 64% white, 20% black, 8% Hispanic, 5% mixed races, and 3 % Asian.
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This article was originally published in shorter form in a special neighborhoods history section of the April issue of The Shepherd Express magazine.
Culture Currents Holiday Greetings for 2022! First, a miscellany of memories of 2021, photo-essay style, of this blog’s year, and of friends, especially some dearly departed ones (Don’t worry, there’s a musical New Year’s pay-off below).
Your blogger refurbishes an old sculpture of his titled, “Tricycle Nightmare.” Photo by John Klett
CC’s Kevernacular out for some CC-style skiing, shot from Lincoln Park’s highest point, the windswept tee box of Hole No. 6.
Who can forget The Milwaukee Bucks making history by defeating the Miami Heat, the New Jersey Nets and the Phoenix Suns, to win their first NBA championship…in half a century? The crazed crowds at Fiserv’s Forum’s Deer District (above) played their part in the fever that stoked the team.
Don’t forget, in 2020 the Bucks also began a brief strike that led all of professional sports in bringing attention to police violence against unarmed black people and systemic racism in America.
Successful businessman, publisher and business-success author Jack Covert, who passed in 2021, once had a slightly more unseemly identity, as owner of Dirty Jack’s Record Rack, a small mecca for Milwaukee music fans in the 1960s and ’70s.
An NPR “American Masters” poll this fall posed the question “What work of art changed your life?” I could not answer with a simple response. One such transforming event was the exhibit of the late Arshile Gorky’s brilliant blend of surrealism and abstract expressionism, at the Guggenheim Museum, in the early 1980s. Above is Gorky’s “The Plow and the Song” from 1946.
Another life-changing work for me was seeing Picasso’s “Guernica,” though I never saw the whole painting, an odd circumstance described in my NRP poll post, regarding the epic anti-Fascist work(s).
The ultimate life-changing work for me — my first encounter with Melville’s “Moby-Dick” obtaining a copy of the 1930 edition, sumptuously illustrated with woodcuts by Rockwell Kent, including this magnificent rendition of the great white whale.
I also honored a great friend, musician, and culture vulture, Jim Glynn (at right) on the anniversary of his death. Jim also served as the best man at my wedding in 1997 (above).
Some of my happiest reporting of the year was interviewing Kai Simone (above), the first-ever executive director of Milwaukee’s Jazz Gallery Center for the Arts. She signifies a fresh new direction, while extending the tradition of the venue’s namesake, The Milwaukee Jazz Gallery, whose heyday in the 1980s contributed greatly to the city’s community and culture.
Speaking of the Jazz Gallery Center for the Arts, my favorite single piece of art this year was in an exibit there. Jessica Schubkegel’s evocative and eloquent sculpture “Chrysallis” (above). made of medical textbook paper and wire, graced a group exhibit, ReBegin: New Works for New Beginnings, in response to the COVID epidemic.
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Perhaps my most personally meaningful trip was a visit to Two Rivers, Wisconsin (above), on the shore of Lake Michigan, which included a fine nature-preserve walk and visiting the field where my father, Norm Lynch (with the ball, below) quarterbacked a great high school football team (three straight seasons undefeated) in the 1940s .
That Washington High football field in Two Rivers remains (below), but is now the domain of geese, who keep it well-fertilized with au natural “yard-markers.”
As COVID threats eased, for a while, Kevin and Ann finally dined out, at Tenuta’s Restaurant, in Bay View, a glorious meal gifted by Ann’s colleagues.
Another fine 2021 memory was of my old friend, composer/jazz pianist Frank Stemper (above), here receiving applause in Austria, where his new work, Symphony No. 4 “Protest,” was premiered. While in Europe, Frank and his spouse Nancy visited Omaha Beach, site of the D-Day landing of allied troops who turned the tide of WWII (below).
“Enter” by Marvin Hill
Two linoleum-cut prints (above) by the late artist Marvin Hill, whom I memorialized in 2021 on the anniversary of his passing in 2003.
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OK, so much for that little montage of 2021 moments for Kevernacular.
Your reasonably dedicated and unreasonably beleaguered blogger wants to pause at this late point in the day (into evening) to wish all of my Culture Currents readers from 2021, and times fore and aft, a very happy new year (!). If some of the year’s blogs “spoke to you” in any way, it goes to bolster my notion that, indeed, Vernaculars Speak!
I am deeply grateful for your interest in this sometimes waywardly-searching blog. Today I’ve been struggling to meet a deadline for The 14th annual International Critics Poll for El Intruso, a Spanish publication for people interested in creative and experimental music. That’s involved plenty of H-Hour auditioning of review CDs that I purchase or receive.
Believe me, it’s been very pleasurable labor, discovering, savoring — and having my mind slightly bent at times by — the new music that comes my way, as a veterans music and arts journalist.
Throat-clearing aside (no, I don’t have COVID!) I can think of no better way of musically wishing you all a happy new year by sharing two brief but delicious videos by one of my favorite Milwaukee musicians of 2021. I’m talking about vibraphonist and marimba player Mike Neumeyer.
He is one of the most irrepressibly vibrant (please pardon the pun, which simply popped out in my comparative state of mental fatigue) musicians I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting (at a free-jazz workshop he led at the Jazz Gallery Center for the Arts, in 2020, shortly before the pandemic struck), and of sharing time with, although ever since it’s been all virtual.
At least we humblyenjoyed ourselves on New Year’s Eve with a bottle of sparkling Proscutto rose, and some scrumptious curry and Nam Khao (deep-fried rice ball, cured pork sausages, peanuts, scallions, cilantro, shredded coconut) from Riverwest’s Sticky Rice Thai Carry Out, on Locust and Weil Streets. Yep, the foodie details are making me hungry too, so I better get to the felicitous point here. 1
I have extolled the talents and spirit of Mike Neumeyer several times this year in this blog (which are obtainable in a simple search with his name at the top of the Culture Currents page, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed).
So I don’t have much energy for further glowing, or even moderately striking, praise for vibist Neumeyer, although I will point out that his positive energy is a great antidote to the stresses and strains of another year of enduring COVID, and much of the madness and travesty that passes for politics in America today. Mike is not above clowning it up a bit but, Lord knows, we need every scrap of comic relief we can get these days.
So, skipping further ado, I will simply direct you to his two versions of “Auld Lang Syne,” One version is short and sweet. The other, also brief, allows for a few grace notes of reflection and perhaps even resolution, for the listener.
Thanks again Mike, for a great year of music and memories And keep up the (ahem)
good vibes. Two (maybe three) increasingly horrid “vibes” puns, and I’m out!
“Auld Lang Syne” played by Mike Neumeyer:
And now, to extend the holiday celebrate a tad more, sample a slightly slower draft of the grand old song, with a little aftertaste of the old year, now bygone forever, save memories:
Surprise! As an extra treat, especially for all you boys and girls who’ve been not too naughty this year, let’s rewind to the spirit of December 25th, and Mike’s rendering of one of the most timeless holiday songs ever born.
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1 We also watched a wonderful film on video on New Year’s Eve. It’s the multi-Academy award-nominated The Father, starring Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman, and written and directed by Florian Zeller. If you haven’t seen it, The Father is uncannily disarming and disorienting in evoking, for the viewer, the point of view of a family patriarch – played with dazzling power and poignance by Hopkins – whose mental powers and pride are rapidly dissembling amid Alzheimer’s.
In watching it, you might begin to doubt either the movie or yourself, but by the end, in reflection, it all makes brilliant sense, in the saddest and most moving of ways. The full-movie video follows immediately with insightful comments from the principals.
New JGCA executive director Kai Simone on the center’s legendary stage, inherited from the original Milwaukee Jazz Gallery. Photos by Kevin Lynch
A new critical biography of the brilliant film director Alfred Hitchcock inevitably examines how he became the first American embodiment of an auteur. 1 The term, originally coined and used by French director-critics, refers to the artist who controls her work’s vision and process, in a group artistic endeavor.
In a significant change, the Jazz Gallery Center for the Arts may have found it’s auteur, Kai Simone. The organization’s mission statement strives for “community…strengthened by creativity.” As the Riverwest Artists Association, the center was a dedicated but collective endeavor. Yet one board member characterized board meetings as sometimes “painful” and, despite the center’s considerable accomplishments, president Mark Lawson commented, perhaps only half-jokingly, ”We really didn’t know what we were doing.”
The RAA is visual arts-oriented, but the JGCA is about diversity in the arts and audience.
JGCA Executive Director Kai Simone (left) will bring diverse experience to the venue’s dedicated board of directors, which includes (standing beside Simone) president Mark Lawson and artist Bennie Higgins.
That’s where Simone, the first-ever executive director, steps in. “I have a very special relationship to jazz,” said the former Chicagoan with an abundance of connections to that city’s rich jazz community, as did the founder of center’s nominal inspiration, the original Milwaukee Jazz Gallery, Chuck LaPaglia. Strong allies of Simone include Heather Ireland Robinson, ED of The Jazz Institute of Chicago, and Emmy Award-winning trumpeter Orbert Davis, artistic director of the Chicago Jazz Philharmonic. A source of inspiration is Ralph Bass, an influential R&B and jazz producer at Chicago’s legendary Chess Records. Such factors should help sustain the jazz/creative music tradition JGCA has provided The Second City’s “second city,” if you will.
The center took a step forward a few years ago with the hiring of Program Manager Amy Schmutte, who leads the successful O.W.L. program, an arts presentations and activities program geared to senior members of the Riverwest community. And as gallery director, Schmutte has dramatically boosted the center’s sales of artwork, especially online sales during the financially tenuous period of the COVID pandemic.
Simone will develop from that success, and look far further afield.
“I also want to build on the legacy of the Milwaukee Jazz Gallery, develop more educational and historical programs, and scholarships.” Simone’s eyes are firmly fixed on the future — and the venue’s distinctive checkerboard stage. She feels the center needs much more outreach to youth culture, a specialty of hers.
The center showed that potential with a monthly performance series geared to hip-hop culture which — before the pandemic — developed a strong youth following almost on its own self-directed momentum.
Simone is an experienced theater director and herein the auteur analogy strengthens. In an interview, this truly seemed a woman of embracing vision, but also fully capable of handling practical operations of a multi-arts center. “I love mentoring, leading, and teaching.” she says. She’s also a performer, a writer, and a singer-songwriter. She founded the arts-ed Skai Academy, an MPS affiliate until the pandemic led to system fund cuts. That circumstance helped lead her to the center’s new opportunity.
For all her educational bona-fides, Simone values ultimately allowing students liberty to think “outside the box.” She relates how she once hid herself inside a cardboard box onstage before an unsuspecting young audience and, when she finally burst out, she had them “hooked.” Such engaging ingenuity should help strengthen the JGCA. Simone also envisions doing more with the WXRW radio programming already benefitting the center, as well as “virtual reality presentations, even animated films.” 2
She also thinks she can combine the center’s non-profit status with indirect profiting strategies, through partnerships, with MPS and Arts @ Large, among other organizations. “We own the building, so rent helps. So, it’s a business approach. I like problem-solving and talking to people about visions and passions. I want to take it to another level.” Regarding diverse community outreach and audience-building, Milwaukee has, besides African-Americans and Latinx, “a huge Hmong community, as well as Japanese, Burmese, and Ghanaian,” said Simone, whose daughter is half-Ghanaian. “I want to think globally and act locally.”
1 The critical biography is The Twelve Lives of Alfred Hitchcock: An Anatomy of the Master of Suspense, by Edward White, published in March 2021.
2. Saturdays at 10 a.m., JGCA board member Elizabeth Vogt hosts WXRW 104.1 FM Riverwest Radio’s weekly Artful Lives, an interview and arts profile program, on behalf of the Jazz Gallery Center for the Arts. It’s a low-power station, but all programs are available to stream live — and in the station’s archives. (The archives include several interviews with this blogger, Kevernacular (Kevin Lynch), about famous jazz musicians I interviewed and reviewed at the original Milwaukee Jazz Gallery run by Chuck LaPaglia.)
