In the heart of Riverwest sits a building whose bland exterior belies the rich creativity within its walls. The intimate space is home to the Jazz Gallery Center for the Arts (926 E. Center St.), an arts nonprofit and venue where musicians play everything from jazz to experimental music to hip-hop in a room featuring a rotating exhibition of work by local artists.
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“It’s one of the few places where you can present music that’s more outside the box, a little more creative, adventurous and even avant-garde,” says Racine trumpeter and composer Jamie Breiwick. “The room is very intimate, and the history of the space is so deep.”
The Jazz Gallery Center’s intentionally varied calendar has earned it a reputation as a haven for unconventional artistry. Because it’s almost entirely run by volunteers, “we don’t have to try to profit on everything we do,” says president Mark Lawson. “It gives us freedom to book some very spectacular and more unusual forms of music.”
And Lawson says the venue is vital for those struggling to make a living as musicians, especially as East Side jazz club The Estate had slowed operations in the past few years.
“That was kind of the hub of the scene,” says Breiwick. “Having the Jazz Gallery around is a blessing. We’re very lucky to have it.”
Many performers are drawn to the center’s “really low stakes,” says local bassist and experimental artist Barry Paul Clark. “There isn’t production overhead, and it’s not just a bar with a stage like a lot of venues.”
Lawson concurs. “It’s very unlike a club atmosphere,” he says. “It’s been called a listening room, which is usually much appreciated by the musicians.”
Beyond music, the center’s also a hub for diverse art exhibitions, many of which are curated around socially relevant themes. Collaborations between mediums are common, such as Milwaukee artist Shelby Keefe live-painting to spoken word and drumming by Victor DeLorenzo of Violent Femmes fame.
In a way, this artistic vibrancy pays tribute to the building’s history. From 1978 to 1984, the Milwaukee Jazz Gallery hosted jazz greats like Dizzy Gillespie and Sun Ra, and local talent like Violent Femmes and Paul Cebar. It lay vacant until it was bought in 2008 by the present-day nonprofit and transformed into a community arts space.
The Jazz Gallery Center serves that community mission by opening the floor to artists of all ages. It often displays works by fine arts grads from MIAD and UW-Milwaukee, and the Older, Wiser, Local (OWL) program gathers seniors to discuss and make art.
But the open-arms vision is most evident with the Jazz Gallery’s improv sessions on Saturdays, when musicians of all backgrounds and skill levels are free to take the stage and play whatever takes shape with one another.
“I wouldn’t call it a jam session,” Lawson says. “It’s a little more than that.”
The Jazz Gallery has also tried to jump into job training. With a grant from the Les Paul Foundation in 2023, the center funded a series of workshops to teach youth the ins and outs of sound engineering to address a critical market shortage. The initial response was positive, but the program ended when it couldn’t expand. “The workshops were excellent,” Lawson says. “We had a good idea and good role models, but we didn’t have enough kids to do it again.”
