Jowee Omicil

Jowee Omicil, whose name is pronounced Joey Om-i-Sil, performs on reeds and woodwinds while also singing, and he works as a composer, bandleader, producer, and educator who splits his time between Miami, Florida and Paris, France. The alternately soulful, spiritual, and warm quality of his sound stems from childhood performances in his father's church as well as his training at Berklee College of Music. Born in Montreal to Haitian immigrants, he issued his debut album Let's Do This in 2006, placing global grooves within contemporary jazz. Roots & Grooves followed in 2009 and highlighted cultural exchange through partnerships with artists from four continents. Naked arrived in 2014 with mostly compact compositions that paid tribute to his influences, while the acclaimed Let's Bash! of 2017 supplied contemporary jazz-funk and soul-jazz pieces. Love Matters came out in 2018 and explored avant expressions through Afro-Caribbean rhythms. Lekture, released in 2020, distilled jazz, folk, and sacred traditions into miniature works, and Spiritual Healing: Bwa Kayiman Freedom Suite appeared in 2024, composed and improvised to recapture the atmosphere of an 18th-century voodoo ceremony widely credited with sparking the Haitian Revolution.

Born in Montreal to Haitian emigrants, Omicil lost his mother, Rose-Annette Innocent, at age five and grew up under the care of his pastor father, Joseph C. Omicil, Sr. As a child he sang and longed to study piano, yet his sister already played organ for church services and his brother focused on trumpet, so his father steered him toward a wind instrument. At fifteen his father placed him in music school, where he selected an older alto saxophone from a teacher's instruments and immediately connected with its tone. He went on to master alto, tenor, and the demanding soprano saxophone while maintaining flute, piccolo, clarinets, and harmonica. Three years into his studies a scholarship took him to Berklee College of Music in Boston, where he majored in music education and absorbed the approaches of saxophonists Kenny Garrett, Steve Coleman, and Branford Marsalis. He later participated in the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, earning a feature on the BET Jazz channel during the competition for its highest award.

After Berklee, Omicil relocated to New York City and developed a friendship with Ornette Coleman that included frequent conversations. He performed with Branford Marsalis and Roy Hargrove's RH Factor, and he took on session and live work alongside Richard Bona, Marcus Miller, Pharoah Sanders, Wyclef Jean, and Harold Faustin. Forming his own band, he worked clubs in New York, Toronto, and Montreal. In 2006 he entered Studio Victor in Montreal with a sextet featuring electric bassist Chris Pottinger and drummer Charles Haynes to record the funky contemporary-jazz debut Let's Do This, issued on his own Jowee Juise, Inc. label. Canadian reviewers responded favorably and the album received CBC airplay.

After a Canadian tour and New York appearances, Omicil and his ensemble collaborated on Roots & Grooves with soloists from four continents, including guitarists Lionel Loueke from Africa, Mawuena Kodjovi from France, and Nir Felder from the United States, plus Haitian vocalist Emeline Michel and American trumpeter Jeremy Pelt. The recording earned international praise along with airplay in Germany, France, U.S. jazz and public radio, and parts of Asia. Shortly before its release the Obama administration invited him to perform at the White House for the first official observance of Haitian Flag Day on 18 May 2010. In 2011 he appeared on Francisco Mela's Tree of Life alongside the other saxophonist, Uri Gurvich.

He spent the next eighteen months touring the album with varying lineups across North America, Western Europe, and the Caribbean. Back in the United States he assembled a septet and captured Naked live to tape at Miami's Riviera Theater as a direct follow-up. Aside from the opening "Prayer 4 Coltrane," the tracks ran between two and four minutes. Although it did not generate the same worldwide attention as its predecessor, jazz writers valued the recording's closeness, resourceful handling of harmony and rhythm, and inviting sonics.

Amid continued touring and session activity, Omicil tracked his fourth album, Let's Bash!, at the renowned La Buissonne studio in Paris. Issued in 2017, it drew broad praise and radio play for its bold, flexible handling of contemporary jazz-funk and soul-jazz. The next year the saxophonist and his nonet reversed direction on the well-received Love Matters!, a focused exploration of modernist post-bop, and he also contributed to Jonathan Jurion's Le Temps Fou: The Music of Marion Brown.

Two years afterward he released the completely solo Lekture, overdubbing saxophones, winds, and piano with only mixing and mastering engineer Edouard Carbonne assisting. That same year he and American pianist Randy Kerber recorded the duet album Y Pati in France for Komos Records. He also performed in the studio band for The Eddy film and soundtrack. In 2021 he joined bassist Louis Moutin and drummer François Moutin for M.O.M., eight melodic post-bop trio improvisations, and he appeared as a guest on trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf's 40 Melodies.

Omicil returned in 2023 with SpiriTuaL HeaLinG: Bwa KaYimaN FreeDoM SuiTe. His most ambitious and abstract project to date, the recording and its ensemble evoked the night of 14 August 1791, when enslaved people in Saint-Domingue convened at Bois Caïman for a voodoo ceremony that ignited the twelve-year Haitian Revolution. The hour-long, twenty-one-track set channels the spirits of leaders and warriors Dutty Boukman and Toussaint Louverture through music that is at once defiant and vulnerable, authoritative and searching. Issued in December 2023, it found resonance among global jazz critics as well as vanguard-jazz and indie-music listeners.