Jake Breaks – Categorical Expansionism (Wide Hive Records, 2025)
Jake Breaks’ Categorical Expansionism is a galvanizing recording that fuses rock, instrumental hip hop, jazz, and western classical music. The record features several Throttle Elevator Music associates: Gregory Howe, trumpeter Erik Jekabson, guitarist Ross Howe, and drummer Mike Hughes. Mads Tolling appears on violin, and Ben Davis is featured on cello.
Two shape-shifting tracks get early attention. “Astral Kithara” brings together Gregory Howe on Rhodes electric piano with Ben Davis’ cello, while “Winds of Fanfare” draws attention to Erik Jekabson’s trumpet alongside Mads Tolling’s splendid violin.
Jekabson, a San Francisco Bay Area-based freelance trumpeter, composer, arranger, and educator, has toured with Illinois Jacquet, John Mayer, and Galactic, and has performed on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno and Late Night With David Letterman. Gregory Howe founded Wide Hive Records in 1996 and is known for work as a producer, mixer, and composer. He also plays guitar, synthesizer, turntable, voice, and percussion on various recordings.
Drummer Mike Hughes, also based in the Bay Area, studied at Los Angeles Music Academy with Joe Porcaro and Ralph Humphrey and spent a decade performing in Los Angeles with artists including Tal Wilkenfeld, Frank Gambale, and Robben Ford. Guitarist Ross Howe, a Bay Area performer and educator, leads The Yacht Club of Paris and was named “Jazz in the Neighborhoods” Rising Star in 2015.