{"id":14169,"date":"2022-05-08T11:27:24","date_gmt":"2022-05-08T16:27:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=14169"},"modified":"2022-05-08T12:23:51","modified_gmt":"2022-05-08T17:23:51","slug":"whether-jazz-hip-hop-or-electronic-trumpeter-jamie-breiwick-rides-the-waves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=14169","title":{"rendered":"Whether Jazz, Hip-Hop or Electronic, trumpeter Jamie Breiwick rides the waves"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Jazz 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.<\/p>\n

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. \u201cI had a Miles t-shirt in high school that I wore constantly,\u201d Breiwick recalls. \u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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 with De La Buena, and the influential 25-year 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.<\/p>\n

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The group KASE: Jamie Breiwick, trumpet and electronics; John Christensen, bass; knowsthetime, turntables and electronics.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Breiwick\u2019s graphic design talents sped this output. He creates 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. <\/em>His jazz-hip-hop-electronics trio, with bassist John Christensen and turntablist Jordan Lee, joined Klassik, perhaps the region\u2019s most musically gifted improv hip-hop singer-song maker, who also plays keyboards and saxophone. KASE logically expands Breiwick\u2019s creative ripples into exploring \u201csonic landscapes\u201d \u2013 Miles ahead, atmospheric, wonder-inducing.<\/p>\n

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The cassette cover of “KASE + Klassik Live at the Opera House,” designed by Jamie Breiwick. Courtesy B-Side Graphics<\/em><\/p>\n

Breiwick\u2019s recorded and group projects have probed ground-breaking jazzers, including Davis, Thelonious Monk, Ornette Coleman, and world-music traveler Don Cherry. He\u2019s also played and recorded transcribed Davis solos for two Hal Leonard play-along books, among six various he\u2019s recorded. \u00a0He values innovative contemporaries like Jason Moran, Ambrose Akinmusire and Nicholas Payton, \u201can incredible trumpet player and musical conceptualist,\u201d and \u201ca thought leader and outspoken BAM (Black American Music) advocate.\u201d He also teaches music at Prairie School, near Racine. How good is Breiwick teaching music? In 2013, he was nominated for the first-ever Grammy Music Educator Award, selected as one of 200 semi-finalists among over 30,000 nominees.<\/p>\n

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The cover of The Jewel: Live at the Dead Poet.<\/em><\/p>\n

Shortly before the pandemic, Breiwick recorded The Jewel: Live at the Dead Poet,<\/em> a New York trio recording on the leading independent label Ropeadope, with internationally acclaimed drummer-bandleader Matt Wilson, thus extending his national modern-jazz bona fides.<\/p>\n

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Breiwick plays a live date (here and in photo at top) with renowned drummer Matt Wilson and bassist John Tate.<\/em><\/p>\n

Breiwick leaves popular success largely to his evolution and artistic authenticity.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it is all in the delivery – people can tell if you are sincere or not. I try to create music and art that I would like myself and try not to be too corny or contrived,\u00a0while at the same time recognizing my influences. What did Coltrane say? \u2018You can play a shoestring\u00a0if you are sincere,\u2019 I think that is perfect.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he knows jazz musicians always need help in America\u2019s capitalist society. Today they can increasingly help each other with online resources. In 2010, Breiwick co-founded Milwaukee Jazz Vision, an online organization that promotes jazz and its community in the Milwaukee area.<\/p>\n

His visual-designer talents suggest deeper creative destinations. \u201cIt is a similar path of discovery. Visual art and music relate in so many ways – texture, structure, organization, color, tone. Five or six of my favorite designers are also musicians. There\u2019s some sort of elemental connection between the two disciplines\u2026Miles Davis was an incredible painter. Jean-Michel Basquiat deeply loved music and often used musical imagery or references such as Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie in his works.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps his most daring recent recording is Solve for X,<\/em> duets with a longtime collaborator. Guitarist-synthesist Jay Mollerskov took samples of Breiwick\u2019s own trumpet solos, to create sonic counterpoints and textural backdrops for Breiwick to play against. It works like a musical mosaic \u2013 outward refracting, rather than narcissistic. That\u2019s because Breiwick knows of whence he came, as a trumpeter and creator.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’m inspired by a lot of things, all sorts of music, visual art, architecture, history, stories, traveling,\u201d he says. \u201cI am just trying to better find out who I am, and ultimately just trying to keep moving forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLike (trumpeter) Clark Terry said, \u2018Emulate, assimilate, innovate.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

So, Breiwick\u2019s self-discovery proceeds. As to forward progress, only time, his seemingly ever-expanding wave, will tell.<\/p>\n

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This article was originally published in slightly shorter form in the May 2022 print magazine edition of The Shepherd Express, <\/em>available free at many locations around Milwaukee County.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Jazz 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 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1297,1301,311,1293,1304,1292,1295,1300,21,1296,1167,1303,242,315,1173,1294,1007,14,1298,423,1299,1302,1170,1169,340,105],"class_list":["post-14169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-www-kevernacular-com","tag-ambrose-akinmusire","tag-black-american-music","tag-blue-note-records","tag-clamnation","tag-clark-terry","tag-de-la-buena","tag-don-cherry","tag-grammy-music-educator-award","tag-jamie-breiwick","tag-jason-moran","tag-jay-mollerskov","tag-jean-michel-basquiat","tag-john-christensen","tag-john-coltrane","tag-kase-klassik-live-at-the-opera-house","tag-knowsthetime","tag-matt-wilson","tag-miles-davis","tag-nicholas-payton","tag-ornette-coleman","tag-prairie-school","tag-ropeadope-records","tag-solve-for-x","tag-the-jewel-live-at-the-dead-poet","tag-the-shepherd-express","tag-thelonious-monk"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hJWE-3Gx","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14169"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14184,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14169\/revisions\/14184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}