Point of View

Photo by Adam Ryan Morris Have you had an experience where you’re watching TV and your music comes on unexpectedly? It’s quite literally at the point now where, if I turn on the television, it’s rare that I don’t hear our work. I’ve been involved in about 6,000 pieces of music over the last 16 years. Our clients are virtually every television network, movie studio, production facility, a lot of post houses, a lot of multimedia producers. There are a few of our competitors that have been around for 20 to 25 years whose music is literally everywhere. And I’m…

Photo by Adam Ryan Morris On the sixth floor of the Milwaukee County Courthouse, 61-year-old Jeffrey Kremers is discussing his pescatarianism when he’s interrupted by seagull squawks outside. (“Don’t get me talking,” he says, “about what they do to my car every night.”) In his second full term as Milwaukee County Circuit Court’s chief judge, he hears lots of other squawking, too. Kremers is, after all, responsible for administering Wisconsin’s largest and busiest judicial district: 47 judges and around 150,000 cases annually, including some 60,000 of the adult criminal variety. Along with the clerk of courts, he oversees about $30…

When Canadian JOHN AXFORD was just a bartender with big-league dreams, he grew a goatee, and the only person who mentioned it was his sister. Now, the former film student’s facial hair is a phenomenon, winning an American Mustache Institute award (the 2011 Robert Goulet Memorial Mustached American of the Year) and even raising money for charity through the Movember movement. The 29-year-old’s fastball isn’t bad, either: Witness his 46 saves last year, a Brewers single-season record. Replicating that success in the club’s injury-ravaged 2012 season has proven elusive. But Ax is still a fan favorite – for his personality,…

Photo by Adam Ryan Morris If you haven’t yet met MARINA DIMITRIJEVIC (pronounced dee-MEE-tree-YEH-vitch), you will soon. The new Milwaukee County Board chairwoman is a listening session junkie. She says she’s held more than 140 of them since joining the board in 2004 at age 22 and has extensive plans for more. Ascending to the board’s top position at 31, she’s the second woman and the youngest person ever elected to the job. Outgoing and determined, she’s nonplussed by the differences between herself and her predecessors. But she’d like reporters to stop asking about her immediate one, Lee Holloway. She…

Photo by Kat Schleicher Vice president of entertainment. It’s one of those titles that seems fictional, too desirable to actually exist. But it does. And 61-year-old Bob Babisch has it. Over 35 years, he’s seen Summerfest transform from grass and mud (and outlawing rock music!) to a town of permanent stages, including this year’s addition of a mini amphitheater, which boasts 5,000 seats and room for 10,000 more to stand. Babisch is the jolly, fast-talking fellow behind the 11-day lineup, scheduling everything from classic rock in the Marcus to indie pop at 3 p.m. But don’t let the friendly demeanor…

Photo by Kat Schleicher NEWaukee President Ian Abston, 28, is young, ambitious and every ounce an idealist. From the small town of Elkhart Lake to UW-Oshkosh and now Milwaukee, Abston has left a mark in his wake. There was the landscaping business in high school, the social group in college and now NEWaukee in Milwaukee, a 3-year-old organization holed up in the basement of the Grand Avenue Mall intent on getting young professionals to explore the city and work toward improving the place they call home. But events large and small aside (something he’s seemingly mastered), can this charismatic entrepreneur…