Bryan Mir
Was it all just a dream? Mystery still shrouds “Dreamland,” but Racine trumpeter Jamie Breiwick is convinced the song is a Thelonious Monk composition, even if its provenance remains hazy. In his exhaustive 2009 biography Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, Robin DG Kelley calls the tune “a bit of a mystery,” as an “old-fashioned ballad that sounds as though it could’ve been written in the 1920s. Monk never copyrighted it, rarely performed it, and only recorded it once…he never spoke about it or explained whether it was just an old song or his old composition.”
Unsatisfied with the recording, Monk refused to release it. Monk’s 1971 live solo piano version is listed as “Meet Me Tonight in Dreamland,” a 1904 song by Leo Friedman and Beth Slater Wilson, which doesn’t resemble what Monk plays. “Perhaps it is a sketch for a song never quite finished,” Kelley speculates.
The intrigue led to immersive investigation by Breiwick, one of the Milwaukee area’s most intelligent, gifted and resourceful musicians. The trumpeter’s Dreamland group—pianist Mark Davis, bassist John Price and drummer Devin Drobka—plays mostly Monk. “I realized there is something deeper to Monk and I had to study him further,” said Breiwick.
“Dreamland” is uncharacteristic Monk. Not that the pianist, deemed a radical and atypical bebopper in his early years, was incapable of reaching into the past or romance. His most famous composition, “’Round Midnight,” broods deeply in romantic loss. His playing draws on stride piano, an anachronism to boppers.
“Almost any musician who has depth in their playing has investigated Monk,” asserts Breiwick, also an educator. He teaches at Maple Dale School and UW-Milwaukee, and was a semi-finalist for the first-ever Grammy Music Educator Award in 2013. He also co-founded Milwaukee Jazz Vision, which advances and promotes jazz and creative music. Among, those directly fueling Breiwick’s Monk obsession were drummer Drobka, who deftly executes Monk’s hole-in-the staircase rhythms; former Milwaukee pianist Barry Velleman; and former Monk sideman Steve Lacy.
Breiwick also gigs regularly at the Mason Street Grill with Mark Davis, who studied with pianist Barry Harris, who lived with Monk toward the end of the reclusive musician’s life.
“Then, I found in the bowels of the Internet, 20 pages deep into Google, a discussion in which someone said they saw Paul Motian play it at the Village Vanguard,” Breiwick relates. “The chart just said ‘Dreamland.’ Then it said ‘Monk played this.’” Motian recorded “Dreamland” with Bill Frisell and Joe Lovano on the album I Have the Room Above Her.
“I was drawn to [Monk’s music] because of how it made me play,” Breiwick says. “It takes you out of your comfort zone in dealing with the harmonies. But the tunes are timeless and modern. I can’t imagine what people thought about them back in the ’40s.”
A typical Monk composition can seem dreamlike. It consistently takes odd, seemingly illogical turns, and often uses shadows of silence. Yet his tune invariably coheres, and sometimes haunts the listener, as a captivating—if strange and often humorous—tale of rhythmic, melodic and harmonic intrigue. Monk’s “Evidence” is a tottering musical skeleton—more silence than notes. Though reflective-sounding, “Dreamland” obliquely fits the Monk scenario. Welcome to the waking dreams of Thelonious Monk and Jamie Breiwick.
Dreamland will perform Friday, Jan. 23 at 8 p.m. in the Dawes Studio Theater of the Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts, 19805 W. Capitol Drive, Brookfield. For information and to purchase tickets, call 262-781-9520 or visit wilson-center.com.
