For Racine-based trumpeter Jamie Breiwick, jazz history dwells within, a story ever-ongoing. He’s mastered significant repertoire of Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk and free-jazz pioneer Ornette Coleman. Here, his great insight is uncovering Coleman’s still-under-appreciated horn front-liner Don Cherry. Thus, Awake rouses cultural consciousness. Trumpeter Cherry expanded on Davis’ more intimate textures, liberated by the Coleman quartet’s dust-storm bluesiness. All these pieces derive from Cherry’s substantial post-Coleman career, tracing his growth and innovation. “Art Deco,” a whistle-worthy, swinging melody, rides the fresh air of unbound chord changes.
Yet Cherry/Breiwick uses freedom as an imaginative, pliable form. The anthemic “Awake Nu” pushes the groove to the outer edge. Then “Brown Rice” grounds us ingeniously with a lumbering bass and uncanny trumpet sounds, almost like a serpentine specter emerging from a rice paddy. Throughout this album, a winged reincarnation – unfettered yet purposive, loving life – pushes the music into earthly fecundity, even as it flies. (Full disclosure: Liner notes include a brief, unpaid biography of Breiwick by this writer.)
