Saxophonist Omicil rides groove home
“You know there’s no summer in Montreal!”
Jowee Omicil laughed as he called my bluff Tuesday morning. On the phone from Paris — “18th arrondissement, behind a cathedral” — the former Montrealer had asked me how things were going in his former hometown, and I had replied that, as usual, summer was creeping in slowly.
Omicil’s energy is contagious, and his enthusiasm boundless. It’s that all-in attitude that allowed him to pick up the saxophone at age 15 and, three years later, in 1995, receive a scholarship to attend Boston’s Berklee College of Music.
It runs through his fourth album, Let’s BasH!, exclamation mark included, a groovy fusion of jazz, Caribbean, soul and hip-hop elements into one upbeat whole.
“It moved fast,” he said of his musical progression. “I really fell passionately in love (with the sax). I spent hours and hours practising. It came to the point my dad was telling me I’ve got to stop.”
Omicil was raised by his pastor father, following the death of his mother when he was five. And it was at the suggestion of his dad, who wanted orchestral accompaniment for the church choir, that he picked up the saxophone in the first place.
“I didn’t want to play any instrument at the time,” Omicil recalled. “I was into baseball, ping-pong, hockey. I was a crazy fan of hockey, but I was small so I used to get hit a lot. I was like, ‘Whoops, maybe hockey’s not going to be a career.’ ”
Arriving at Berklee, he had some catching up to do. Many of his peers had been playing since early childhood. But while he learned about technique, Omicil also learned, in a roundabout way, about himself.
“I had to find what it was that I had to do, musically and personally, that would set me on a different path — on my path,” he said. “I realized that we were all learning how to play alike, but we weren’t really trying to get our own thing. ... I’m like, ‘OK, here it is, I’ve got to start developing something I’m hearing in my head that no one else can be hearing.’ And I’ve followed that since then.”
One running theme in Omicil’s career has been to reconnect with his Haitian roots. He settled in Miami, where he still has an apartment, and spent a lot of time travelling to Haiti, playing on albums by Haitian musicians and getting involved in the campaign of former president Michel Martelly.
On Let’s BasH!, he nods to a wide range of influences, from trumpeter Roy Hargrove to Miles Davis, Cape Verde clarinetist Luis Morais and Charlie Chaplin. They ’ll all be with him in spirit when he takes the stage at L’Astral on Saturday as part of the Montreal International Jazz Festival.
“I just got off the phone with my dad in Montreal,” Omicil said. “He’s retired. He’s 81 years old, and he goes between Panama, Haiti and Montreal in the summertime. Right now, he’s in Montreal and he’s going to be there.
“I’m very, very, very happy. It’s my first time at the Montreal Jazz Festival. I’ve played around the world, but I’ve never played the Montreal Jazz Festival. It’s been one of my dreams since I was 15. Believe it or not, I used to go to the ( jazz fest kids’ music school), Petite école du jazz, when I was 13. I didn’t even play an instrument.”
Omicil’s older sister, Liette, will be making the trip in from Ottawa, as will his brother, Johnny, and some of his old teachers.
“We’re gonna have fun,” Omicil promised.
No doubt.