Since the late 1970s, Milwaukee has been home to the Jazz Estate -- a reliably excellent place to see both local and touring jazz musicians. This history has had its ups and downs, however.
During the first few months of the COVID pandemic, the Estate shut its doors, only to open up a bit later as a cocktail bar without its signature live jazz. In early 2025, the owner changed the format again, to feature live music but only opening for business on weekends. This format proved insufficient to keep the venue open, and a few months back the announcement came that the legendary club would once again close its doors.
On the final weekend of the venue, we were treated to a wonderfully engaging and confident double bill of Neil Davis and Andrew Trim, both strong local guitarists, and both backed by the capable rhythm section of bassist Clay Schauband drummer Devin Drobka. Davis' excellent first set will be shared soon; we are now presenting Trim's fiery final set of the evening. The set opens with originals by both Schaub and Trim before leading to an unexpected Daniel Johnston cover and several jazz standards. Davis returns to the stage to partner with Trim for the final three tunes.
Josh Berman brought his trio (consisting of Jason Roebke on bass and Chris Corsano on drums) to the Jazz Estate in October for two sets of new material. The music presented was expressive yet polished with plenty of tunefulness to complement his energetic freedom. These thoughtful new compositions were grouped into four medleys. I did not see the point in trying to split these medleys into their components so they are presented below as they were performed.
I first saw Ken Vandermark perform in early 1994 at the old Hothouse in the Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago, when it was in the Flatiron Building. He was leading his Vandermark Quartet, opening for Tom Varner. At that performance I was extremely impressed with guitarist, violinist, and cornetist Dan Scanlan, whose white-hot energy and virtuosity made me feel like I was in the presence of an erupting volcano. I thought drummer Michael Zerang's style was a fascinating mix of powerful rhythm and unexpected (even exotic) textures. My initial impression of Vandermark was that he was an earnest enough saxophonist who was trying a bit too hard to sound like a rock-influenced Ornette Coleman.
After seeing the band a few more times, I soon realized that Scanlan preferred just one speed (very fast) and one intensity (full-blast) with very little variety. This could be quite exciting but also had the potential to become exhausting with prolonged exposure. I began perceiving more complexity and range in Vandermark's playing. With that, I quickly became a fan and unabashed booster of his playing and (especially) his compositions.
Soon I was seeing Vandermark perform three or four times a week, every single week. He started performing more with Mars Williams, in the duo Cinghale and then bands NRG Ensemble and Albert Ayler-inspired Witches and Devils. He then went on to perform frequently with Kent Kessler and Hamid Drake in the DKV Trio. By the end of 1994 I had seen him perform at least a hundred times in many different contexts. I kept up that pace for all of 1995 and the first half of 1996.
Since I moved to Milwaukee in 1996, each year here has unfortunately had progressively fewer chances to see him perform. At first I would drive down to Chicago weekly to see my fill of jazz for a night. Then the car trips became monthly, and eventually once a season or so. Luckily for Milwaukee music fans, for a decade and a half Vandermark was a frequent performer at the legendary Sugar Maple bar in Milwaukee.
About a week ago he came to the Jazz Estate for the very first public performance of his compositions of his latest project -- Edition XL. This band is his Edition Redux quartet -- Erez Desell, Beth McDonald, and Lily Finnegan -- with the additions of cornetist Josh Berman and bassist Nick Macri.
Recently, Vandermark described his compositional methods in a statement on his website, which in part reads:
At this point, seven pieces have been completed: one “triptych” working with different tempos that explore a generalized “jazz lexicon”, a second triptych to focuses on “free-funk” ideas influenced by Miles Davis’ “Cellar Door Sessions”, and the beginning of a third triptych that’s going to investigate different musical strategies set in motion by Cecil Taylor’s groups from the late 50’s/early 60’s.
Each piece has three components, essentially foreground, midground, and background. The first step was in the writing. I needed to figure out how to overlay the charts for each composition so each part would speak with clarity. This meant selecting the aesthetics, key center to work with, and essential structure (AABA, ABAC, etc.) for each triptych and applying this to the writing procedures. This was necessary because, not only do the three components need to combine with each other, they also need to merge with the other pieces in the triptych, so each foreground can utilize a different midground or background.
The second step has been to figure out how to distribute the parts so the foreground material always remains primary. This has gone through many permutations. The first was to assign three instrumental voices to the foreground part, and one the mid and background parts, with Erez playing the written elements in octaves to make two “voices” available in the arrangements. Another key factor is that every part of each composition can be played by any of the musicians, so the lead voices on one performance might be tuba, clarinet, and cornet; with the secondary “voices” being the keyboard in octaves, and background part played by the bass. On another occasion the same piece might feature the keyboard in octaves with tenor sax; and the midground covered by tuba and cornet, with the bass in this instance using a walking bass line.
This was an excellent performance of a mature jazz composer at the height of his abilities, writing complex but very enjoyable pieces for a virtuoso ensemble of musicians.
