{"id":7670,"date":"2016-07-10T15:21:10","date_gmt":"2016-07-10T15:21:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=7670"},"modified":"2016-07-11T03:04:18","modified_gmt":"2016-07-11T03:04:18","slug":"dreamland-in-blu-thelonious-monk-music-reimagined-at-cloud-altitude","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=7670","title":{"rendered":"Dreamland in Blu: Thelonious Monk Music Reimagined at Cloud Altitude"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Dreamland’s cloud in Blu, 23-plus stories up.<\/em><\/p>\n

This brief photo essay interprets the experience of hearing Dreamland, an imaginative and courageous ensemble which has worked hard in recent years to make much of the challenging Thelonious Monk repertoire alive for new listeners, and gratified old Monk fans.<\/p>\n

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The band Dreamland is named for an obscure Monk tune rediscovered by trumpeter\/bandleader Jamie Breiwick. Monk often seemed to live in his own private dreamland. Photo by Eugene W. Smith, courtesy UPI.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The band, conceived and led by trumpeter Jamie Breiwick, performed Friday night at Blu, the nightclub located on the 23rd floor of the Pfister Hotel, \u00a0with stunning views of the downtown Milwaukee lakefront.
\nI began taking a few photographs with no agenda. Gradually it seemed that the band’s ambition in reaching high to master and re-imagine Monk’s technically vexing yet uncannily charming and intriguing music — in such an atmospheric noir setting — was worth a visual treatment, or a dream sequence.<\/p>\n

Such stimulating variables may be partly why they’re one of my favorite music groups. So, though a longtime arts and jazz writer, and because this concerns the architecture of Monk and of Milwaukee, I am in letting the dreamland images speak for themselves (for the most part), mindful of a famous Monk quote: “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.”<\/p>\n

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Dreamland warms up the Blu night club audience shortly before dusk (L-R, pianist Mark Davis, bassist Clay Schaub, trumpeter Jamie Breiwick, drummer Devin Drobka).<\/em><\/p>\n

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From Blu’s windows, you see the counterpoint of classic and modern Milwaukee architecture, looking south toward the Hoan Bridge.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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At least one couple seems transported by Dreamland.<\/em><\/p>\n

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The still-rising\u00a0Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance tower is illuminated by many stories of its construction lights on the right tower portion. At, right, the blue flame atop the iconic Milwaukee Gaslight Building forecasts the weather.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Blu is the rhythm of drums deep in the night.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Dreamland begins heating up as darkness as falls on Milwaukee.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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From Blu we see the end of the I-94 expressway in the foreground, curving into the southbound Hoan Bridge harbor overpass. Many years ago, when the I-94 ramp remained an unfinished precipice high over the ground level, it was used as “the expressway to nowhere” in the precariously climactic closing car chase scene in the film “The Blues Brothers.”<\/em><\/p>\n

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Trumpeter Breiwick uses his hand over his bell to bend a mournful note on a Monk ballad.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Even the carpeting in Blu has\u00a0a dancing, dreamlike quality.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Jamie Breiwick performing, and radiating, “Light Blue.”<\/em><\/p>\n

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Just maybe, this is how Thelonious Monk \u2013 a genius of dancing, songful abstraction \u2013 might have viewed Milwaukee’s south shoreline along the Hoan Bridge.<\/em><\/p>\n

P.S. Well, I’m fudging a bit on my promise to let the photos do all the heavy lifting, such as it is. But I’ll add a few more comments about Dreamland, whom I profiled previously here:<\/p>\n

Trumpeter Jamie Breiwick “dreams” of Thelonious Monk’s music<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n