New and revitalized
Milwaukee jazz scene booming with venues, young talent, but will it thrive?
“The issue is people actually coming out. … There are people around here who don’t want to pay for music, and these businesses thrive on people’s support. If they don’t support businesses these places are going to close.” EVAN CHRISTIAN GIBRALTAR OWNER, JAZZ GUITARIST
The band at Gibraltar is exquisite. The purr of Mark Thierfelder’s Hammond B-3 organ fills the warm room, receding for Devin Drobka’s hi-hat snaps and snare rumbles. When Neil Davis soulfully strums his electric guitar, his right foot wiggles, involuntarily, like an alien antenna picking up a signal.
As the trio jams, only six customers, including Thierfelder’s wife, are watching.
The show, in a nutshell, symbolizes what’s going on with the Milwaukee jazz scene.
With new and revitalized venues like the eight-month-old Gibraltar, opportunities are expanding for local jazz musicians, including adventurous young arrivals. The surge is so noticeable that Jazz in the Park, the outdoor concert series in Cathedral Square that’s frequently veered from the genre, is hosting a “Fresh Faces of Milwaukee Jazz” show Thursday with up-and-comers Roxi Copland and Foreign Goods.
There are more jazz venues and local jazz shows than the city’s seen in three decades. The big unknown is if the scene is sustainable at this size.
“We have a tremendous pool of musicians,” said Gibraltar owner Evan Christian, a jazz guitarist who has played in Milwaukee for almost 20
years. “The issue is people actually coming out. … There are people around here who don’t want to pay for music, and these businesses thrive on people’s support. If they don’t support businesses these places are going to close.”
The latest boom
Milwaukee's downtown and Bronzeville neighborhoods enjoyed a peak jazz boom in the late 1940s and early 1950s, where hot clubs like the Flame and Curro’s reeled people. A significant bounce back in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s brought jazz to such venues as Teddy’s, the Jazz Oasis and the Bamboo Room.
Now we’re experiencing another revival. Each week jazz connoisseurs can count on sets at Mr. J's Lounge, Caroline’s, Gibraltar, Transfer, Blu, the Packing House, Mason Street Grill, the year-old Chic Underground and the remodeled Jazz Estate . That doesn’t include annual events — like the five-year-old Jazz in the Hood in Bronzeville, the Bay View Jazz Fest, and Jazz Visions on the Lake on the Summerfest grounds (the latter two established in 2014). Other venues host multiple jazz shows a year including
Company Brewing, the Sugar Maple and the historic Jazz Gallery Center for the Arts in Riverwest.
“Right now there are more jazz clubs than we’ve had since the early ‘80s,” said August Ray, an avid local jazz fan for 65 years. "And in the last year or so, there has been an uptick in local jazz attendance."
There’s more variety, too.
Gibraltar’s jazz-oriented bookings have spanned from flamenco to Afrobeat to traditional quartets.
The 40-year-old Jazz Estate, reopened in November with local musician Eric Jacobson controlling the calendar, has greatly expanded its programming. Next week’s roster alone includes a funk night with local guitar master Angie Swan; the Nick Lang Trio's front-to-back live presentation of Horace Silver’s “The Cape Verdean Blues"; a Gypsy jazz showcase with guitarist Scott Hlavanka; an appearance from 83year-old local jazz legend Manty Ellis; and five additional concerts. The Estate has had success booking early and late shows on Fridays and Saturdays to appeal to different crowds.
“You have to be openminded with jazz because it's such a huge window,” Jacobson said. “You can go from straight-ahead to hard bop to avant-garde to fusion to Latin jazz to modern jazz. If we’re closing the doors to just one certain thing, I don’t think it would do the scene a good service.”
Owner John Dye said he never expected the Jazz Estate to be a booming business, but it is performing slightly above expectations, driven in part, to his surprise, by a clientele in their mid-20s through early 30s.
That’s the same age range for some of the more exciting emerging jazz players in town, including singer-pianist Copland, 34; Foreign Goods founder Jay Anderson, 25; and percussionist, vibraphonist and composer Mitch Shiner, 25.
“Twenty years ago (musicians felt) they had to go to Nashville, Los Angeles or Austin, Texas if they wanted a career in music,” Copland said. “That’s no longer the case. The Internet has made it where you can live anywhere and collaborate with artists around the world, and people of my generation are finding a city that they love and an art scene that they want to be a part of and growing there.”
Copland herself is one of those artists, a native of Aberdeen, Wash., who spent time in Des Moines and Vancouver, before settling down in Milwaukee in 2012. Another is tenor saxophonist Jonathan Greenstein, who grew up in Israel and lived in New York, and recently moved to Milwaukee.
A few leading local players who cut their teeth in more prominent music cities have returned home to Milwaukee in recent years, said Jamie Breiwick, co-founder of Milwaukee Jazz Vision, a local scene news site and concert promoter since 2010.
Racine native and trumpet ace Russ Johnson, whose eye-popping resumé includes recording on a Kelly Clarkson album, has been in town since 2010, holding a day job as the director of jazz studies at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside.
Drummer Drobka, 31, lived in New York as a touring musician for three years, moving back to Milwaukee in 2013.“I was broke,” Drobka said of trying to make ends meet in New York. “(In Milwaukee) I have more time and space to create music. I wanted to create a higher quality of life.”
In return, he's contributing to a higher quality jazz scene. Yet there are still shortcomings.
“We need more women showcased and involved,” Copland said of the maledominated scene. “I’ve chatted with promoters who want to hire more women but say it’s hard to do so because there aren’t as many women available to play. But it’s a chicken and egg problem. If a nine-year-old girl says she wants to be a jazz musician, but she can’t see a jazz artist locally like her, that’s tough.”
Places to learn
Those aspiring jazz musicians, at least, have plenty of places to hone their craft in Milwaukee.
The Wisconsin Conservatory of Music operates one of the oldest jazz education programs in the country, with nationally recognized trumpeter Brian Lynch and pianist Dan Nimmer among its alums.
There’s also the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s jazz curriculum and its Youth Jazz Ensemble for high school students. The Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra added a jazz studies program in 2004. Many of the city’s premiere players also teach students at the four-yearold West End Conservatory.
As for the sustainability issue, the scene's success will hinge not just on the public or venue operators, but on local musicians’ ability to promote themselves, Foreign Goods’ Anderson suggests.
Between Goods, his other bands Black & Mad and Stomata, and appearances with hip-hop collective New Age Narcissism and local rap star Ish DARR, Anderson is one of the city's busiest musicians. He also runs a record label, Voodoo Honey, books several concerts at Riverwest venues, and shrewdly markets his shows, and shows for colleagues, on social media and to the local press.
“This is my living, so people have to go (to shows) or else I don’t eat, and a lot of other musicians don’t get that,” he said. “If artists continue to go to clubs and play shows and generate zero revenue and play for an empty house, that is what will sink the jazz scene. … Nothing in this world is free. You have to take it.”