Riverwest Jazz Fest postscript: Man, it was a hundred-proof happening!

 

The Erotic Adventures of the Static Chicken, performing in Madison. isthmus.com

It was small and compact, but the first Riverwest Jazz Fest delivered a blow — a wake-up call — that should leave the city’s consciousness slightly dazed, and asking for more, if it has a cultural backbone.

Apologies if that lead exceeds an acceptable testosterone limit, but sometimes such associations seem more apt than others. Of course, it’s really too early to tell what sort of impact this event will have on the neighborhood or city, but you can begin to imagine by realizing that it was planned to be twice as big, and strives to be just that in the future.

As it was, the event, tucked neatly in a slightly two block-plus parameter of Center Street right off of Humboldt Blvd., allowed patrons easy access to all three bubbling venues: The Jazz Gallery Center for the Arts, Bar Centro, and Company Brewing. Plus, there was at least one band jamming in the storefront studios of Riverwest Radio, located between JGCA and Centro.

Talk about concentrated. Let’s say you couldn’t do much better even if you were a jazz-aholic who needs to down a row of hundred-proof musical shots.

Yes, I know, Wisconsin “has a drinking problem.” Maybe I’m better off retreating into comfy cliché-land for the faint-hearted. This was “the little fest that could.”

Three other venues were all originally solicited to be pioneering fest participants. Each had some reason to decline.

Their loss, of course, but hopefully herein lies a lesson or two about smart marketing, especially in your own neighborhood, the lifeblood of such small venues. Each venue did have to pony up pay for the musicians, as the whole event was free admission, donations and tips aside. But that sort of commitment is the first step in smart collaborative marketing. An organized event like a jazz fest pretty much assures a built-in audience and revenue boost.

Although none of the crowds were literally shoulder-to-shoulder, everywhere on Center, people either milled and chilled in the Harvest Moon nocturne, or strolled to another venue.

Kudos to JGCA president Mark Lawson, reportedly whose brainchild this was. I suspect Lawson might’ve sensed this was an urgent moment to give the neighborhood a cultural jolt, as his space had foundered somewhat in terms of consistent recent musical activity. That’s hardly to diminish the place as a consistently and successfully operated art gallery.

And yet, as is fairly well known, the venue has a tremendous music legacy to maintain, that of the historic Milwaukee Jazz Gallery, whose inspired grotto of a ghost it inhabits.

The venue now has the cultural audacity to be a grants-dependent, community-oriented “arts center.” Though sans the original venue’s bar, it remains the sort of thing this neighborhood should embrace gladly. So, JGCA is an ever-colorful listening space, and still boasts the now-vintage checkerboard stage that hosted many famous jazz names in the Milwaukee Jazz Gallery days, and a respectable Yamaha baby grand house piano, and new sound system. The space’s success as a visual art gallery derives from the owning entity, the Riverwest Artists Association, strongly oriented to visual artists, and its president, Lawson, is a professional gallery curator.

Drummer Victor DeLorenzo, formerly of The Violent Femmes and currently in the chamber rock duo Nineteen Thirteen, guest performs at the long-standing “Seeds Sounds” free jazz series at the Jazz Gallery Center for the Arts. riverwest.org.

His musical tastes lean toward more experimental and offbeat music than straight-ahead jazz, so “ya-never-know-what-you’re-gonna-get,” as a chocolate-loving pop philosopher once declared. Friday night strongly reinforced that reputation. The headline act proved as provocative and engrossing as its name, The Erotic Adventures of the Static Chicken (pictured at top) sports one of the most hilariously mock-bildungsroman monikers for a jazz band I’ve encountered.

The trio is led by ace and, yes, adventurous saxophonist Aaron Van Oudenallen (a.k.a. Aaron Gardner), who might be the second coming of electric-saxophone pioneer Eddie Harris; or what we hope Eddie would be doing today, if alive and pushing the hip envelope hard. Their set was a kaleidoscope of electronica, from slyly lyrical big-sky starbursts to Ab-Ex grunge, almost invariably underpinned by powerful currents of funk and driving rhythm. Van Oudenallen often plays with one hand twiddling an electronic effects box — as if an expose’ of the man behind the curtain, The Wizard of Odds.

Fender electric bassist Matt Turner regales the audience with his potent, pulsing virtuosity, and his eccentric affability. Drummer Jeremy Kunziar delivers multidirectional piston-like power.

This electronically deep-diving band has been around for a number of years and evidently has a decent (or indecent, as their name might suggest) following, at least slightly beneath “the lower frequencies,” where they speak to you, to paraphrase the great Invisible Man novelist Ralph Ellison.

The Chicken’s set included a boiling jam with trumpeter Jamie Breiwick sitting in, which climaxed with the band scorching Harris’s masterpiece “Freedom Jazz Dance,” a propulsive, shaman’s-shake of chord changes.

If you’re on Facebook, here’s a clip of The Chicken in full flight at the fest, during “Freedom,” courtesy of Tami Williams: https://www.facebook.com/fiilm/videos/3616003828679078

Meanwhile, over at the street’s straight-ahead jazz refuge, Bar Centro, a surprise waited in unknown-to-me bandleader and pianist Tael Estremera, He was possibly the youngest performer in the fest, yet also the most modern trad-oriented, as I heard them covering small masterpieces from John Coltrane’s classic album Giant Steps, including the title tune and the exquisitely modulated “Naima.” The quartet’s guitarist, Ben Dameron, whose own band Heirloom did the opening set, seems to be everywhere these days, and is a flash-firing virtuoso, slightly reminiscent of John McLaughlin. You should him check out ASAP.

The stylishly curvaceous bar at Bar Centro is a strong feature of this fast-rising Riverwest jazz venue. visitmilwaukee.com.

Finally, a happy hubbub brimmed at a nearly packed house at Company Brewing. Trumpeter Eric Jacobson, best known for his bristling hard-bop, was delivering an appealingly relaxed set of modern jazz with a primo quartet of local vets, reflective of his excellent recent album Discover.

Jazz trumpeter Eric Jacobson. foxcitiesmagazine. com

Just about then, the festival’s headliner, double Grammy-winning trumpeter Brian Lynch, sauntered into Company and the table was set for the climax of the festival.

Alas, I had to depart just before Lynch’s set, but I have no doubt it was a compelling and bracing topper to an auspiciously-debuted event we hope becomes annual.

As for newborn Riverwest Jazz Fest, here’s a toast:

Let your garden grow,

in our pastures of cultural plenty,

as in, plenty mo’ music,

every which way you go.

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1. However, the arts center has consistently hosted a weekly “free jazz” workshop and, more recently, the Milwaukee Jazz Institute’s weekly educational jam sessions, and other community gatherings.

  • who says Riverwesters don’t have a politically incorrect sense of humor? I just took this snapshot of by back-alley Riverwest neighbor’s handsome new wooden security fence with the following sign. (Apologies for my impertinence).

The Jazz Gallery Center for the Arts finds its “Auteur”

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.”

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This article was originally published in slightly shorter form in the Neighborhoods section of The Shepherd Express https://shepherdexpress.com/neighborhoods/riverwest/jazz-gallery-center-for-the-arts-finds-its-auteur/

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.)

The Jazz Gallery Center for the Arts is seeking an executive director, a paid position

The Jazz Gallery Center for the Arts in 2020. All photos by Elizabeth Vogt.

The Mark Davis Trio (L-R, Davis, Dave Bayles, Jeff Hamann) at the JGCA Pianofest.

As an arts journalist, I have no formal affiliation with The Jazz Gallery Center for the Arts. Nevertheless I’m very interested in seeing it not only succeed, but grow and evolve. My motives go back to it’s nominal inspiration, the original Milwaukee Jazz Gallery at the same location.

The vibrancy of that community-oriented music venue was a key factor in my early journalistic career when, in 1979, I started covering it and other jazz (and other music and arts) in a surprisingly blossoming local scene for the pre-merger Milwaukee Journal 1

Today’s JGCA is a more formal non-profit arts organization, heretofore mainly run by dedicated volunteers. It has steered through many lean financial years with dogged determination, vision, applied talent and important involvement from Milwaukee’s Riverwest community.

Drummer Paul Westphal, violinist Linda Binder and bass clarinetist Rick Ollman at the JGCA Seeds Sounds concert series.

The JGCA emerges from the pandemic with growing optimism and even a successful visual arts business year, according to organization president Mark Lawson. The venue’s excellent recent group art exhibit, ReBegin, reflecting on the pandemic experience — which I reviewed for The Shepherd Express and this blog — is an example of its current artistic viability, even if they haven’t had live music since the pandemic shutdown. Lawson says he anticipates live performances returning to the center “sometime in July.”

So, the JGCA is ready to hire its first executive director, a paid, part-time position that could evolve into a full-time job. They are advertising for the position on their website, linked here, with details on the job: JGCA executive director job post

Applications are being received through June 25.

If you are a creative, take-charge person dedicated to the performing and visual arts, and have the right stuff to lead a small but serious arts organization, you might be the person for this job. I imagine, especially among the millennial and Gen-X generations (or perhaps even some baby boomers), there are a number of people in this region who could do this job, especially considering the many under-employed but talented, experienced and aspiring professional people with liberal arts orientations. The center’s music side is geared to jazz, free-improv, experimental music, and hip-hop, etc., but the new ED could help shape that direction as well.

The center owns a fine Yamaha baby grand piano and raised funds for significant recent building renovations and upgrades, including a new digital recording-quality sound system.

Bader Philanthropies, The Greater Milwaukee Foundation, and other funding sources, including many individual donations, have greatly aided the center’s viability.

If you read about the position here and apply, let them know (and let me know) you read about it here.

Good luck to all candidates and the JGCA, and more power to the best person who gets the job.

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1 This writer’s work from that period, and that of other journalists, is documented in Milwaukee Jazz Gallery 1978-1984, an anthology of press coverage and other memorabilia, from founder-owner Chuck LaPaglia’s remarkable grassroots arts venue. The venue gained a strong reputation among many touring jazz musicians. The anthology is available at the JGCA, Boswell Books, Woodland Pattern, and through Amazon.