Bay View Jazz Fest 2024 flyer
Bay View Jazz Fest, running on Friday night May 31 from 5 to 11 p.m., sprawls significantly beyond the ostensible main street. This year, South Kinnickinnic Avenue addresses will only host two of the fest’s seven venues. Humboldt Park Beer Garden might be the most appealing site, but don’t stop there to get your fullest jazz fixes.
This is live jazz to the absolute hilt, with 15 groups going at it. Other performance spaces include Twisted Path Distillery, Revel Bar, Rev Pop, Magnet Factory, Cache Cider and Morgan Park. It’s Milwaukee’s largest free-admission jazz festival. Most probably the BVJF is annually the most prodigious one-night jazz event in the city’s history.
And calling all culture cravers—the fest also locks arms with the concurrent to Bay View Gallery Night. So, there’s art aplenty to visually enhance the music experience.
BVJF is presented by Milwaukee Jazz Vision, a historically minded jazz promotion organization, thus it continues “to redeem the rich jazz heritage” of the city.
Some festival highlights, from this observer:
Festival organizer and Jazz Vision co-founder Jamie Breiwick continues his prolific ways with a new recording, Nu Trio, and an album release party at Rev Pop, 2559 S. Howell Ave. at 5:30 p.m., followed by Mark Davis, perhaps Milwaukee’s premiere jazz pianist, and artistic director of the Milwaukee Jazz Institute, leading a trio at 7:30.
Breiwick’s is truly a “new trio” with Breiwick playing trumpet and flugelhorn and making his recording debut on piano. He has worked extensively with bassist Tim Ipsen in the past, but this is his first confluence with esteemed Chicago drummer Tim Daisy on an album.
Another notable band is Match Stick, a jazz fusion outfit headed by vibist Mitch Shiner, 8 p.m. at Twisted Path Distillery. Featuring Ben Dameron on guitar, the band’s influences “range from “The Mahavishnu Orchestra to Rage Against the Machine.”
The Jeanne Marie Farinelli Quartet, is at 7:30 p.m. t Humbolt Beer Garden (“Jazz at the Vine”), 3000 S. Howell Ave. In recent times tenor saxophonist-flutist Farinelli has added stylish heft to the fine group Heirloom, with a rich tone, Shorter-esque obliquities and persuasive improvs.
The Tim Whalen Trio (at 5 p.m. Revel Bar, 2246 S Kinnickinnic Ave) is led by a deeply accomplished, widely traveled modernist pianist, whose recent recordings include an authoritative exposition of bop genius Bud Powell’s repertoire. Whalen also co-anchors the large Madison funk ensemble Phat Phunktion.
The Kenny Reichert Quartet is led by a boundary-stretching, harmonically-deft jazz guitarist based in Chicago but born in Brookfield. He’s at Magnet Factory, 2424 S. Graham Ave. at 5 p.m., followed there at 7 p.m. by another Chicago-based Milwaukeean, alto saxophonist Lenard Simpson in a trio setting. I’ve heard Simpson display great stylistic range, in both big band and small combo settings in recent times.
Other bands playing the fest include Sweet Sheiks at 6 p.m. at Twisted Path; The Troubadours of Rhythm at 5 p.m. at Humboldt Beer Garden; The Neil Davis Quartet at 7 p.m. and Cigarette Break at 9p.m. at Revel Bar; The Isaiah Jones Organ Trio at 9 p.m. at Magnet Factory; The Garrett Waite Trio at 5:30 p.m. and EKG at 7:30 p.m. at Cache Cider, 2612 S Greeley St Suite 123; and Carlos Adames at 5 p.m. at Morgan Park, 3400 S. Kinnickinnic Ave. For schedule and information visit bvgn.org/bay-view-jazz-fest.
