Memories of Winter Jazz Breezy

By Piotr Orlov

After the late trumpeter jaimie branch moved to New York in 2015, she was a regular at pretty much all Winter Jazzfests that followed. Breezy loved that, over the course of its hectic week, she could get a few different gigs in, at least one that would inevitably feature her own proj- ects — whether the jaimie branch quartet that was soon renamed Fly Or Die, or her electronic improvisation duo Anteloper — but also because it gave her the opportunity to play with others, finding new contexts and adventures, some that would lead to lasting collaborations, some never to be heard from again.

Of the numerous times I saw branch perform at WJF, the after-hours jam session at Nublu in 2019 is the one that stands out most vividly. Not because it was any version of “the best” or “most unique” that she offered — those might have been at a 2018 Fly Or Die gig where the vi- braphonist Joel Ross was added to the group, or her participation in the one-time-only reading of Ornette Coleman’s “Free Jazz” that paired the electric power-trio Harriet Tubman with James Brandon Lewis’ Unruly band, which branch’s trumpet helped make even rowdier. The reason that late-Friday night at Nublu has long loomed in my mind is that it gave me the greatest sense of jaimie branch as an organizer, as a charismatic magnet for other musicians, as someone who understood the creative moment, had the artistic power to both control it and let it flow, and who had the smarts and the will to make it happen. Prior, I’d already known and loved jaimie branch as a fearless player; that night I fell for her as a potential elder and a community bed- rock.

The occasion was the first of a two-night bill called “Chicago Overground,” shows that I co-pro- duced with International Anthem’s Scottie McNiece and which featured some members of the Windy City’s “new” generation of players, many of whom were jaimie’s old friends, compatriots, collaborators. So of course she wanted to be involved—except that she was booked to play elsewhere in the festival, and we were looking to feature folks who had no other gigs, and
were coming in from Chi. That said, Scottie and I had already discussed having open late-night sessions as each evening’s closing programs, and wanted Chicago affiliates to lead: Breezy grabbed the chance, with bassist Luke Stewart and drummer Warren Trae Crudup III (the exper- imental thrashers in Blacks’ Myths who were also the rhythm section for Unruly) as her wing- men. And off they went, starting at around 1 a.m.

It was the tail-end of a loooong WJF marathon night. Nublu on Loisaida Ave is a bit of a haul from the clustered congregation of Village jazz clubs, and the temperature was well below freezing, with East River gusts reaching deep below the layers and into the bones. The cynic in me wasn’t sure just how well-attended the jam was going to be–which made the steady stream of musicians who walked through the door with their various axes (horns, reeds, guitars–a keytar!) that much more surprising. As jaimie, Luke and Trae initiated a joyful noise, the would- be participants began lining Nublu’s stage-left staircase, beneath the painting of Miles, waiting for the cue that would signal their turn at glory. And there was Breezy, her tone a full-force gale, the witching hour driving the sorcery, turning towards the initiates and welcoming them onto the stage. With her eyes and a gesture of her horn, she conducted, coached, and paced them, first feeding them a musical worm, then making way for them to leave the nest. Or, if they were sloppy or unprepared, brutally cutting them off, as she did one drunken saxophonist, uncer- emoniously booting him from the stage. You did not cross her—she meant business. But this business was in the name of a greater truth. The music would take wide turns: originating in the melody-heavy changes of standards, with the central trio always moments away from galloping happily off a cliff. Before going on, the initiates’ faces held expressions somewhere between fear, adulation and eagerness. Afterward, most had the dead-eyed stare of someone disem- barking a rollercoaster a little more thrilling than expected: “Do I go again?” “Will she let me?”

Of course she would let them. As Luke wrote in a wonderful poem after jaimie’s tragic passing on August 22, “Breezy is Love.” And one reason I believe that to be 100% true is that love means a belief in the future, a belief in the people helping create it, which, in jaimie’s case has always meant the community of musicians dreaming up that sonic about-to-be, together in real time. This, then, is what the “Flock Up and Fly” gathering is all about, taking place on that same stage where I saw jaimie branch participate in above-the-line community-building. Her old friends

will be there, her recent ones as well, maybe even some of the initiates, the assholes and the clowns. Breezy will be there too, the angel and the devil on everyone’s shoulder. It’s at Winter Jazzfest, no way she’d miss it.