One of the most beloved and highly respected musicians of his generation, saxophonist Michael Brecker has spent four decades playing with a passionate intensity and incredible soulfulness in genres ranging from pop, funk and jazz to world beat and chamber music.
At this writing, Brecker is back in the woodshed, continuing his life-long search for new sounds, new modes of expression. It’s been that kind of roller coaster ride for Brecker since being diagnosed with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) in May 2005. In the months that followed, he has undergone a barrage of tests, surgeries, therapies, trials and protocols to fight this deadly disease. In January 2006, Brecker received an experimental haplo (half-matching) blood stem cell transplant, with his daughter Jess as the donor. Still too weak to commune with his horn, he’s playing the EWI again, investigating its rainbow of sonic possibilities via MIDI hookup to his new Apple G5 computer. His longtime friend and programming partner George Whitty has been working with Brecker on some advanced surround sound applications with the EWI.
Meanwhile, Brecker is feeling OK. On good days, he makes phone calls to friends and returns emails. Then there are those other days when he feels fatigued. Lately, though, he’s been responding positively to steroid treatments and feeling stronger. Close friends who have gotten surprise phone calls from him report that his voice sounds like “the Mikey of old.” He’s also been having visitors over to his home in Hastings, N.Y. He hangs out with them, talking, laughing, watching Yankees games on TV, showing them his latest EWI tricks. And so it goes. He has a good day, he has a bad day. And we continue to send prayers and good vibrations his way in hopes of a full recovery for this iconic sax player and beloved gentleman of jazz.
JazzTimes reached out to friends, colleagues and disciples of Michael Brecker to get a better read on the character of the man, his contribution to the saxophone and to jazz in general. Ironically, interviews for this story wrapped up on Brecker’s 57th birthday: March 29. At roughly the same time, vibraphonist, longtime friend and Steps Ahead founder Mike Mainieri presented Brecker with a special quilt as a birthday gift. It had been stitched together from dozens of autographed T-shirts gathered from musicians that Brecker has played with during his storied career. It was their way of sending him some love and positive vibrations during his time of recovery. In the same spirit, we hope that this quilt of personal testimony has a similar effect.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
Marc Copland, pianist
From the time I first played with Mike, when he was 14 or 15 years old, it was plain that he was phenomenally talented. He had very big ears and could play fast as blazes even back then. He played intricate lines over changes he didn’t understand theoretically, but he could hear them and digest them. It was just natural. And he was incredibly modest about his enormous talent.
Charlie Haden, bassist
I might be the one who goes back further musically with Mike than a lot of people, because I was a judge at the Intercollegiate Jazz Competition at Notre Dame in the late ’60s. Mike was a student with his brother, Randy, and they had a band together. And I voted him Best Musician in the competition. I was so impressed with his musicianship. He was Michael Brecker even then!
Hal Galper, pianist
I had been working with Randy in a quartet at a club uptown called La Intrigue, and he had mentioned that his younger brother, who was still at the University of Indiana, was coming to New York. He said, “If you think I can play, wait ’til you hear him.” So Michael got to New York and I called him to play on my first recording, Gorilla Band, for Mainstream Records. I just brought him in blind, I took Randy’s word for it. And Michael was just unbelievable. It’s amazing how mature and powerful his playing was at that young age. I didn’t have to tell him anything, not a thing. We were playing very complex music with double rhythm sections and guitar, and Michael was just killing.
Mike Mainieri, vibraphonist
I met Mike when he first came to town sometime in ’68. Randy had brought him around. And as soon as I heard Michael, it was like the first time I heard Gadd. I got goosebumps. I thought, “Wait a minute! Something’s happening here, and it’s deep!” And he was just a kid, 19 or so. I have pictures of him from that period where he looks like he’s 15 years old. But I knew right away that there was something extraordinary there. It was the type of thing where your head spins around three times and you go, “What the hell was that?” Randy had been talking about Mike, but he’s not the kind of a guy who’s gonna rave about somebody. He was more like, “Yeah, my kid brother plays saxophone, he’s gonna come by,” in that little off-handed kind of way of Randy’s. We all knew right away that Mike was really special.
Will Lee, bassist
Mike is the reason I’m in New York. There was this very innovative band called Dreams, which for my taste is the ultimate jazz-rock fusion band. And it was those guys: Mike and Randy, Barry Rogers, Billy Cobham, Don Grolnick, Bob Mann. They were looking for a bass player after Chuck Rainey decided he was leaving. And they somehow got wind of me down in Miami, but I don’t think they even knew that I was a Dreams freak. I knew all about these guys and I was so into their records.
Arif Mardin, producer
My history with Mike goes back to the early ’70s when I was working with the Average White Band. I became friends with Randy and Michael and both brothers played on a lot of my productions, since they were both first-call New York session players at the time. Michael played some incredible solos on one of my first jazz albums called Journey (1975). But the climax definitely was his incredible solo during a gig in Switzerland in 1976 with the Montreux All-Stars. He played the last solo on a big-band arrangement that I wrote for “Pick Up the Pieces.” Different soloists were playing and he closed the song with this incredible solo and the audience went totally berserk.
Hal Galper
Mike was really channeling some Coltrane energy on the bandstand back then. We worked all the places in New York over three years, and I remember one critic referring to us as Average White Trane, which I thought was funny. That band was kind of a cult phenomenon of its time. It was very influential in terms of younger players trying to duplicate that kind of modal playing. And Mike was a kind of focal point for that.
Mike Stern, guitarist
I used to see him in the ’70s when he and Randy were playing with Hal Galper and I kind of introduced myself. I met him another time when I was playing with Blood, Sweat & Tears and we talked a bit. I got closer to him when I was trying to get through all those years of being totally crazy with the drugs and alcohol. He had already had his own experience with that and was amazingly helpful to me and a lot of people.
Donny McCaslin, saxophonist
Maybe one of the first things I ever heard him on was one of those Blue Montreux records. I was in high school at the time and there’s a tune in particular of his called “Uptown Ed,” a kind of post-boppish melody, and I remember being just astonished at the virtuosity, of course, but also by the passion in his sound and the intensity with which he plays his instrument. Those things just hit me right away as a 14-year-old. And I was like, “Man! That’s how I want to play.”
Will Lee
Me, Mike and Randy and Alvin Queen went out with Horace Silver and toured with him for a year, which was pretty spectacular. To hear Mike and Randy playing Horace’s music was a real treat. I continued playing with Mike and Randy when the Brecker Brothers Band started up in ’75. We stayed together through ’77, touring and recording and everything, and there were a lot of laughs to be had. Mike and Randy were some funny cats, man. They both have this wry sense of humor and they were funny together, and you can hear their humor in their playing. They were just fun to hang out with.
Branford Marsalis, saxophonist
The first time I heard him play was on Billy Cobham’s recordings from the early ’70s. The shit amazed me, man. I was 15 years old and I had never heard nothin’ like that. And then I heard him play with the Brecker Brothers on “Some Skunk Funk”; I wrote an arrangement of that tune for my high school jazz ensemble. We played “Some Skunk Funk” on almost every concert we did. It was our closing song. “Some Skunk Funk” was my introduction to the idea that you could use harmony in that fashion, so that was an important lesson.
Dean Brown, guitarist
The first time Mike and I played together was during the spring of 1982. We were doing a project in Lugano, Switzerland for Billy Cobham that was going to be a series of instructional videos, a kid’s introduction to jazz sort of thing. And at one point, we found this lounge in the hotel that had a table-top version of the old video game called Frogger, which was a nice distraction for Mike. He’s always been a video game freak. During the course of playing this game, he would talk about music, and he had some fascinating thoughts about improvisation and how he perceived people’s ways of expressing themselves.
Mike Mainieri
Back in the old days when video games first started coming out and we’d go to Japan, Mike would always seek out the latest shit. And his hand-to-eye coordination was so amazing. He was like Mr. Pacman. His mind, his vision was so profound in that area, like a master chess player. And I think that carried over to his music-making abilities.
Branford Marsalis
When I heard him playing the solos on Parliament-Funkadelic albums, that was a parallel universe for me. He was playing the horn parts on “Mothership Connection,” which I heard at the same time that I heard those first Billy Cobham recordings. That was the first shit I learned. And I had no idea until years later that it was Mike on both of those sessions.
Tim Ries, saxophonist
The first time I met him was in 1981 when I was going to North Texas State. I was in the lab band and we happened to open up for Steps Ahead for every gig they did for a stretch of like three weeks. Here I was this 21-year-old aspiring tenor player, just sitting off to the side in the wings, watching Michael Brecker play his ass off every night. To see a guy of that level of technical ability play in front of you every day for three weeks…it was just amazing. And then sitting next to him on the plane and talking about music was equally amazing to me. So from the very beginning, I thought of him almost as a demigod-this person who was almost untouchable, unapproachable. But I found out that he was warm, generous and very open to somebody who was a student.
Chris Potter, saxophonist
I first checked Mike out when I was in high school. I was already involved in playing the saxophone at that point, starting to play professionally around the South Carolina area. And I remember getting the Steps Ahead record from 1983. That was my first exposure to Mike’s playing and I just couldn’t believe it. I just remember thinking, “Man, this is as far as you could ever go on the saxophone.”
Jim Beard, keyboardist
I first met Mike at the Village Vanguard in 1985. He was playing with a group led by Marc Johnson. I was new in town and a little wet behind the ears and I was immediately struck by his humble, unpresuming and down-to-earth nature. When I introduced myself, he responded as if he was already familiar with me. Since I’ve gotten to know him, I realize that this probably was the case because one thing I’ve learned about Mike is that he is an avid hunter of information. Information of all types: repertoire, recordings, artists in and out of town, instruments acoustic and electric.
ON THE BANDSTAND
Hal Galper
By the late ’70s, when I formed my quintet with Billy Hart and Wayne Dockery, [Michael and Randy] were already famous as the Brecker Brothers and they were doing a lot of rock ‘n’ roll recording. So we made a deal that they would lend me their names and I would write the music and do the booking and create an opportunity for them to really stretch out and play. And Mike was really hitting his stride then. It may have been six or seven years between the times that we played together and, man, Michael had gotten so strong! His time and his tone were so together that it was frightening following him. Randy didn’t want to follow him, I didn’t want to follow him. Because Michael wasn’t happy unless he got a standing ovation after every solo…and he always did.
Joe Lovano, saxophonist
Mike plays with such deep passion and has such joy in doing it. He’s just incredible to be around and share the stage with. Whatever ensemble he’s in, he brings it up to another level with his playing. There are a lot of situations I’ve heard Mike in where everybody that follows him tried to play what he played. And then it turns into a thing where everyone’s reaching for the same place. That can happen when you have such a powerful force on the bandstand.
Joey Calderazzo, pianist
Mike and I have a deep connection on the bandstand. We have this kind of uncanny hookup that we used to call “The Thing,” where I would start shifting the harmony behind him so that if we were playing in F, we’d end up on C-sharp. It was not just your basic thing where guys play more diatonically. This stuff was really kind of outside of the harmony. As we got older and Mike became more and more comfortable, the shifting would take place and we necessarily wouldn’t have to hit the big climax. We could sort of let that one go and start again. And that thing really developed to a high level between myself and Mike. I have never had that kind of relationship on the bandstand with anybody.
Herbie Hancock, pianist
Mike really inspires me. He’s so inventive and creative and he’s so smart and quick. He never runs out of ideas, and responds to anything I throw at him. He’s never judgmental about it; he just reacts. He always seems to be thrilled by a challenge on the bandstand. When we first did the Directions in Music tour, the idea was to celebrate the 75th birthdays of Miles Davis and John Coltrane, because they were both about the same age. We all had to come up with new ways to conceive of the tunes that we decided to play by those great heroes of ours. Perhaps in the education of doing those projects, in the execution of the music, there were things that I brought to the arrangements that were of the moment, that may have been different than what Mike was accustomed to hearing from other piano players. Rather than being solidly grounded, harmonically and rhythmically, I was definitely throwing him curve balls. And he loved it.
Adam Rogers, guitarist
Pretty much every night Mike is really digging deep and pulling out a lot of stuff and playing with this phenomenal amount of intensity that you can’t help but be affected by, regardless of how you particularly play as an improviser. Being on the bandstand with him really made me think about my own playing in a lot of different ways. Because when Mike plays, after he’s done with an improvisation you kind of have to think, “Well, how do I want to play after that?” It really makes you think about your own playing and what things do you want to elicit. It’s really a thought-provoking experience to play next to Mike.
Joey Calderazzo
I remember watching him play years ago with another saxophone player, and this guy was no slouch, either. But when Mike soloed, it was just clear that there was something special about it. He was on another level entirely.
Scott Colley, bassist
During our Directions in Music tour last year, Mike seemed really driven by his pursuit of new sounds with the EWI and the whole surround sound setup. And although he wasn’t feeling that great, he really put out as much energy on that tour as anybody. Mike and Herbie had a G5 apiece on stage, and it was incredible to watch what Mike would do every night on his solo EWI portion of the show, which really evolved from night to night. It’s an incredible thing from a technology standpoint, but listening to him play the EWI, he’s really developed it into something that is uniquely his own. When you hear the sounds he chooses and the way he puts them together, it’s clear that Mike has developed an identity on that instrument, just as he’s done on the tenor sax.
Herbie Hancock
What Mike did with his unaccompanied rendition of “Naima” on those first few tours was something else. Every night that got standing ovations and people couldn’t stop applauding. It was that amazing.
Chick Corea, pianist
I’ve known Michael since the ’60s and every project we’ve done together has always been totally inspiring. But the best one was our recent gig at the Blue Note in December 2001 for my 60th birthday party. It was like that band with Steve Gadd and Eddie Gomez had never stopped playing. Michael played with unrestrained creativity and passion on that gig.
THE SESSION MUSICIAN
Phil Ramone, producer
His solos are not just a great bunch of notes tied together to impress us with his facility. It’s much more than that with Mike. He’s like an architect. And I’ve been very fortunate over the years to see that kind of ability show up on sessions I’ve produced. He comes into a session and just puts his Brecker footprint right where you wanted it.
Jason Miles, keyboardist/producer
I remember a time we were working in the studio on a piece for one of my albums and Mike blew this incredible solo on it. When we were listening to the playback, he turned to me and said, “You gotta throw that away, man. We’re making a pop song and this thing’s gotta be crafted like a hit pop song.” And he goes in there and plays this very simple solo but that’s so elegant and beautiful. He’s one of the only jazz guys that really knows how to craft a pop solo.
Billy Cobham, drummer
There was a day when I needed to have Michael come in to the studio to play on a composition of mine called “Heather,” and he was late. When he finally arrived for the session he was a bit stressed, so I said to him, “Please just listen to this and play what you hear and feel from the heart.” I said this because I have always known Mike to be a very sensitive person who is always looking inside himself to understand who he is and how to project this person through the music. Well, the track is running, and he plays what to me was the best solo I had heard him play to that point that we had worked together. It was a classic Michael Brecker “First take!” I was extremely happy with it and wanted to just stop there but Michael always thought that it could be better. So we tried it maybe three or four more times before I had to put my foot down and say, “No mas!” He is a first take, spontaneous kind of guy and is still numero uno in my book.
Phil Ramone
There are some great jazz musicians and great improvisers but what I think is wonderful is when you can actually listen back and hear a solo that you never forget. And that’s true of Mike’s solo on “Still Crazy After All These Years.” It’s his most identifiable and most quoted solo.
Jim Beard
Michael is one of a select breed of musicians who is truly at home in just about any musical environment. He not only has the desire but the complete musical makeup to play the heck out of anything and everything, whether it is a progressive contemporary composition or a toe-tapping ditty, a tear-jerking ballad or greasy funk. He brings the familiar to the unfamiliar and vice versa.
THE SAXOPHONIST
Will Lee
I used to live with Mike Brecker when I first lived in New York because I didn’t have a pad yet. Here I was coming from Texas and Miami and I get to this grid called Manhattan, and basically to me all the streets and buildings looked the same, especially where Mike was living down on 19th Street in the Chelsea area. And I wouldn’t have found my way home if it wasn’t for the fact that he practiced what seemed like 24 hours a day. So I just followed the sound of his horn when I got close. The room where Mike practiced was the only other room that he had available for me to sleep in. But my sleeping did not keep him from practicing and his practicing definitely didn’t keep me from sleeping. Because by the time I would awaken he would’ve been practicing for a full two or three hours in that same room at full volume. But talk about dedication!
Walt Weiskopf
Mike loves to practice, and I believe that, in combination with his enormous gift as a natural musician, this is what contributes to the transcendent way he plays the horn. Hearing Mike play is exactly like hearing a great singer in that there is no audible barrier between his emotional content and the ear of the listener. The way Michael Brecker plays the horn is the result of consistent dedication coupled with a rare talent and natural ability to blow the saxophone.
Donny McCaslin
I remember seeing him when I was a student at Berklee. This was around the time that his first record as a leader came out on Impulse! He was a guest artist and did a clinic and a concert with a student ensemble. And I remember hearing him say in the clinic that he was taking saxophone lessons and composition lessons. I was struck by the fact that here was a guy at the top of his field and he’s still studying the saxophone.
Claus Ogerman, arranger
Every 25 years a musician like Michael comes along. He reminds me of Glenn Gould, because Glenn played everything very brisk but extremely clear. No wishy-washy statements with him. And this also applies to Michael. He has a pristine sense of execution where you can follow every note. No matter how fast Michael plays, you can follow him perfectly. Stan Getz once told me, “Just put a piece of music in front of me and I’ll give you a masterpiece.” This also applies to Michael. I think he’s pretty phenomenal in terms of sight-reading, his command over the instrument, his improvisational and interpretive abilities…everything, really.
Phil Ramone
Michael has a sound on the tenor saxophone that is really very inviting. It’s very sensuous and he can get upstairs and really take your head off when he needs to. But the bottom line is, he has an instantly recognizable voice on his instrument. I think that’s the key to some of the great success of artists in general. Of course, he’s a monstrous jazz improviser. But at heart, he’s a song man. He understands that the song has form, and why. He respects that there is a melody and yet he goes all over the place with it. When you solo on a tune, you can either get so far out that nothing works, or you can get so far inside of it that you are part of the melody and part of the construction.
Arif Mardin
He chooses very adventurous notes on the harmonies and the chords. He just soars into another land when he plays a solo. There are traces of John Coltrane in his playing, but he’s got all the great tenor sax historic influences in there as well. With his full tone he can play ballads beautifully, like Coleman Hawkins or Ben Webster. Or he can play a lot of notes, like Coltrane.
Chris Potter
The first thing that grabbed me about Mike’s playing—such a unique sound and the depth of his concept. And when you got into the kind of lines that he was playing I could recognize that he was kind of taking things that Coltrane had done, things that Joe Henderson had done, and just carried it even further in some ways, as far as ways of incorporating false fingerings into his lines and ways of superimposing various other kinds of harmonies on top of the basic harmony.
Joey Calderazzo
Mike always had that blistering technique. The guy is an amazing saxophone player. What he would play on Gsus…I’d hit a Gsus chord and he would know instantly what to play on top of that. He just has an intuitive sense like that. And Mike has always had this kind of gift of being able to bring sheer excitement to music.
Tim Ries
To me, Mike plays with such ease and virtuosity, he’s like the Heifetz of the saxophone. His ability to take ideas and motives and develop them with such clarity and precision and beauty on the instrument is so rare. Never mind even the incredible jazz aspect of his playing; just being able to play an instrument that well only happens to very few people on the planet. You can count on two hands maybe the number of people who were able to have the kind of dexterity that Mike has on the saxophone. And to hear him getting into all these turns and trills and idiosyncratic things with the Bulgarian gypsy music he’s been working on…it just takes it all to another level.
Adam Rogers
An amazing thing about Mike is that he’s a real student of music. And I have always felt that he’s most interested in things that he hasn’t heard before. In playing with him, the more that I would delve into my recesses to pull something out that maybe I didn’t know how to do, the more interested he would become. He loves that process of exploration in himself or in the musicians he’s playing with.
Dean Brown
The thing about Mike is that, in my opinion, he’s also an alien. He can do stuff on the horn that few normal humans can do, in terms of the brainpower that it takes and the sheer emotional, organic continuity between what he feels and what he’s able to play. And Mike’s work with the EWI is just boundless. It’s driven by his restless curiosity of what’s possible.
George Whitty, keyboardist
Mike’s curiosity with finding new sounds and possibilities with the EWI is definitely driven by the same musical instinct that makes him such a great saxophone player. But I really think that it’s the fact that his musical capacity doesn’t just fit on a saxophone. Especially the idea for being able to generate polyphony. Mike’s a real genius with that. He can sit there and just play a monophonic line on the EWI and out comes all this really beautiful harmony. So I think it’s kind of a natural extension of how gifted he is as a melodic player.
THE MAN
Branford Marsalis
In the late ’80s, I got to know Mike as a person, and that is valuable to me. We were in Japan and ended up spending a lot of time together. And we didn’t really spend that much time talking about music or saxophone. But I really enjoyed my time with him and his wife, Susan, who was a tennis instructor at the time. We played tennis together there in Japan and it was just great. It was nice to be included in on his life as opposed to the general music scene. It was a lot more meaningful to me having that interaction with him and his wife than just meeting him at a jam session and playing some tunes.
Donny McCaslin
One of my strongest impressions of Mike was meeting him and discovering that he was such a humble and gracious person. That was years later, when I was playing in Steps Ahead during the mid-’90s. I got to talk to him a bit and he was just so funny and self-effacing and goodnatured that it just put me at ease immediately.
Peter Erskine, drummer
Whether he was urging me to get the music into “fifth gear,” or wondering why I might sound real good on one occasion and real bad the next, I could always take Mike’s advice or criticism because Mike Brecker does not have a mean bone in his body.
Charlie Haden
Mike has always impressed me with his musicianship, of course, but his qualities as a person have also been at a very high level. He’s a very humble, very giving person. And he’s got a really great sense of humor.
Mike Stern
I think Mike’s humanity and all that soul that he’s got as a person comes through very much in his playing. As astounding as it is technically, it’s still really warm and soulful, which is a tricky thing to pull off. But he’s always had that. Randy has that, too. That’s just the Brecker quality, I guess. That and their amazing sense of humor. Both those guys are as funny as hell, especially when they’re telling road stories. And Mike’s got a million of ’em.
Adam Rogers
On a couple of tours I did with Mike, he filmed these really funny things with his Canon digital camera. I was honored to be a part of one, although it was indicting in ways I don’t know if I want out there. It’s pretty funny, though, and certainly the way he edited it together was hysterical. He brings his monumental obsessive creativity into that medium as well, as you might imagine. At first meeting he’s quiet and humble, but he’s got a really fantastic sense of humor. He seems to always be able to pull out the underlying funniness in any situation.
Will Lee
Mike has that spontaneous outburst of a laugh that is so infectious. At the same time, Mike has always been such a sensitive guy and so humble. In my mind, if you have the combination of humility and extraordinary talent that he has, you are destined for greatness.
Branford Marsalis
The last time they [Brecker’s group with Calderazzo, James Genus and Tain Watts] played in New York, I was there. And after their set …we were hanging out backstage and just talking about family. That’s ultimately what’s most important. All this bullshit that we deal with on a regular basis in the music world—who can play, who can’t, my band is better than your band. At the end of the day, who really gives a damn about these so-called controversies, which are little more than some seventh-grade schoolyard bullshit. So it was just great to be in that situation with Mike where it was more real than that.
Mike Stern
I consider him one of my closest friends. He’s helped me get through a lot of stuff. And he’s been there for a lot of other people too, but in a humble way. He’s very compassionate that way. And like all of us, he’s been through a bunch of stuff. And he’s been amazing at being able to use his experience to help other people in so many ways. As great a musician he is, what he represents to me on a personal level is almost heavier than the music. I’ve never met a kinder, more caring person.
Tim Ries
I look back on the six years I lived in Hastings and think that was one of the greatest periods of my life, because I was less than a mile from the guy and I could kind of go over and get to hang with Michael Brecker. And it’s like you’re hanging out with a guru. People go to India to study with this kind of person, and I had a cat on that same level in my own backyard.
HIS INFLUENCE
Joe Lovano
Mike’s been a big influence on me as far as really finding my own way. Every generation has leaders and pace-setters that people grab ahold of and are on their coattails. And for me, trying to be a contrast to Mike was a big thing in my development. Because he’s so powerful and strong, it’s like, “Man, I gotta be able to stand next to this cat.”
Kenny Werner, pianist
Mike is a testimony to the power of one’s inner voice. I find that it makes his prodigious technique secondary, which is saying a lot because Mike took the technique of the tenor to a new level. But the power of his voice mirrors the power of his own self. Mike has been able to channel from within directly through the horn and into our collective consciousness. When one does that, one changes the world. Mike did that.
Ron Goldstein, record company executive
There is no musician or artist whom I respect more than Michael Brecker. I put him in the same class as Bill Evans, both professionally and as a person. Michael’s originality, dedication and purity of sound, combined with an instinctively soulful approach to music, make him a truly gifted and spiritually based artist.
Peter Erskine
Michael Brecker is an iconic musician. Michael possesses the ability, technique, and the heart and soul that only a few of the greatest jazz musicians can claim. I submit that he is the master musician of our time. But, beyond all that, Michael has always striven to find truth in the musical moment. That’s why his playing touches the spirit of so many of us. One note, and you know it’s Mike.
Marc Copland
Over the course of his obviously influential career, Mike continued to develop his linear concept and wedded it to a folk music, which all great musicians and composers have done. He was attracted to American R&B, which is just as valid as the Hungarian folk music Bartok drew from, or the Indian and Gregorian music that influenced Coltrane.
Jason Miles
He’s one of the true giants of this music…somebody who has been able to morph into so many different situations convincingly. There are very few people who could go and deconstruct jazz standards with Herbie Hancock, then play on a pop record with Rod Stewart or Paul Simon and then go blow on Cameo’s “Candy,” which is one of the greatest funk groove solos of all time. And in all of those different settings he never lost the spirit of who he was. He just naturally understands the whole structure of different kinds of music. Mike is somebody who really has to take his place among the giants.
Mike Mainieri
He’s been a role model not only for young cats, but he’s been a role model for cats who are his contemporaries and for people who are older. I think he’s made people play better. He’s forced a lot of people to play better because they knew they were going to be playing with him on the same stage or at the same festival. And ultimately, he’s inspired so many cats to go home and shed. He’s inspired the older generation, the younger ones and his contemporaries to work harder and just to be in that moment with their instrument.
Chris Potter
Mike was extremely inspiring to me as a young saxophonist growing up, and then meeting him and getting to talk to him and just seeing how he approached music, and the way he acted in general, has been a huge further source of inspiration for me. It’s important for all of us of any generation to have people that we can look up to from a previous generation that can help show the way. And Mike’s been an especially large one for me. He combines extreme natural ability with the drive and the curiosity to take it as far you can. That’s the only way I think that you ever get to that ridiculous kind of level that he’s on.
Dean Brown
There are people, like Mike Brecker, who can change your path and change your life simply by playing. Just by living near them, having dinner with them and hanging out with them, that’s where this sort of osmosis can occur, if you let it. And I got that just from talking with Mike over a game of Frogger. I’m not even talking about what a profound effect all the gigs and all the plane rides and bus rides and the experience of being on the bandstand with him has had on me.
Charlie Haden
He is really a musician who can take a song and just make it better and bring something new to it each time he plays. That’s a special gift.
Scott Colley
Regardless of the environment or the genre, he will put every ounce of energy as well as every bit of his vast knowledge of musical history to make incredible music. I think in a lot of ways it goes well beyond just his playing. You can also hear it through all the playing of all the people he’s influenced over the years. You can hear direct threads of Mike’s influence in players today like Donny McCaslin, Chris Potter and Mark Turner. He’s created a high standard for every saxophone player of my generation.
Mike Mainieri
Mike has been as deep and influential as any of great tenor saxophonists. What he did was really unique. He really changed the instrument, in my opinion. He took it to another branch off that original tree, and there aren’t too many cats you could say that about. But the influence that Michael has had has been tremendous and groundbreaking.
Tim Ries
He has such a brilliant mind, he’s the kind of guy who would’ve been successful as a lawyer, a doctor or engineer or something. Whatever he would’ve chosen to focus his attention on, he probably would’ve been highly successful. It just happened to be music that he chose, and we’re all the better off for it.
WELL WISHES
Mike Mainieri
I witnessed his first signs of the disease he is now suffering from. I’ve seen him play through the pain, and still play his ass off! And this is a guy who would not take any medication. And up until three weeks before the Steps Ahead reunion tour of 2005, he was still gonna do it, even though he couldn’t get out of bed at that point. The guy has a heroic spirit, and it’s that same spirit that is going to get him through his illness.
Tim Ries
I saw Mike in the hospital last July right before I went out on the Stones summer tour. Since then he’s just been battling every day and it’s been one step ahead, two steps back. During that tour, I called him on the phone and said, “Michael, if there’s anything I can do…my wife and I will help out with the kids, whatever you need.” And he said, “Man, there’s only one thing: Just keep playing beautiful music.”
Branford Marsalis
Mike’s been fighting the good fight. We’re all praying for him.
Herbie Hancock
I’m just glad that he’s getting this reprieve lately and that his strength is coming back so that when whatever deal comes down—whether it’s the stem cell transplant or something else—he’ll have the strength to be able to do it. And I’m saying when, not if. Meanwhile, I chant for him every day, twice a day. And I’ve been doing that ever since I heard that he was sick.
Peter Erskine
I’ve always been an optimist, and so I have hoped for the best with full confidence that Mike will get better. More than optimism, though, I had to believe this, because I could not yet imagine the world without him. As of now, the news is good about Mike’s health. We’re all the better for it.
Phil Ramone
I want to be working in the studio with Mike again in the future. I want that very badly and pray for him every day.
Gil Goldstein
We need to finish up this Bulgarian music project that we were working on for about a year up until the time that Mike got sick. I’m firmly convinced that we’re going to do this record soon. He continues to call it the Bulgarian record but to me it’s just Mike exploring some new thing. It’s been on hold for a while but I’m literally 100 percent convinced that we’re going to finish this record and that Mike is going to do not only this record but others as well.
Joey Calderazzo
I just hope that Mike continues to get strong enough to get back out there. Because I know how much he loves playing music. And he’s too young, in my eyes, to not be out there doing it still.
Charlie Haden
I love Michael Brecker and I want all the best for him. We just gotta keep the positive vibrations going and he’s gonna be OK. I know it. And I also know that we’re going to be playing together again.
Mike Stern
He’s a special person. And I’ll tell you one thing about that motherfucker: He’s tough. He used to throw his back out all the time with Steps and I’ve seen him play through the pain. He shows up to the gig and plays his ass off no matter how bad he might be feeling. So he’s definitely tough. And I know that this illness kicked his ass so hard, but he’s bringing that toughness to the fight.
Will Lee
Right now there’s a lot of hope for Mike. And so much of it is him…just the strong nature of his character. Plus the fact that there’s a lot of love heading in his direction from a lot of places. That makes a big difference. Those kind of positive vibrations can really lift him up.
LISTENING TO BRECKER
From his first recording on brother Randy’s 1969 debut as a leader, Score (Solid State), to his early ’70s work with Dreams, Billy Cobham and Horace Silver; from the string of consecutive recordings he made with Randy through ’70s as the popular jazz-funk ambassadors the Brecker Brothers through his early ’80s collaborations with Steps Ahead; from his tenure as a bandleader in his own right beginning in 1986 to his Brecker Brothers reunion in the early ’90s and on through to more recent collaborations with Herbie Hancock and Roy Hargrove in Directions in Music and with Joe Lovano and Dave Liebman in the Saxophone Summit, Brecker has distinguished himself as a world-class improviser with one of the most instantly recognizable voices in jazz.
As an in-demand session player during the ’70s, Brecker contributed to a deluge of prominent pop projects by such producers as Arif Mardin, Tommy LiPuma, Phil Ramone and others. In that more controlled studio setting, he has exhibited an uncanny ability to craft brilliant solos within the fabric of pop structures. His memorable solos on Paul Simon’s “Still Crazy After All These Years” and James Taylor’s “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight,” for instance, are melodic gems that have become part of our collective consciousness over the years.
Brecker has also made significant contributions to recordings by pop and rock royalty such as James Brown’s Get on the Good Foot (1972, Polydor), John Lennon’s Mind Games (1973, Capitol), Aerosmith’s Get Your Wings (1974, Columbia), Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run (1975, Columbia), Blue Oyster Cult’s Agents of Fortune (1976, Columbia), Parliament’s Clones of Dr. Funkenstein (1977, Casablanca), Steely Dan’s Gaucho (1980, MCA), Ashford & Simpson’s Solid (1984, Capitol), Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms (1985, Warner Bros.), Eric Clapton’s August (1986, Reprise), James Taylor’s Never Die Young (1988, Columbia/Legacy), Michael Bolton’s Soul Provider (1989, Columbia) and Paul Simon’s Rhythm of the Saints (1990, Warner Bros.).
This very same tenor saxophonist can turn around and unleash the kind of dazzling, virtuosic improvisations-executed with formidable abandon and intensity-that rank him in the upper echelon of all-time great jazz saxophonists. Some of Brecker’s highwater marks as a sideman in those more harmonically adventurous, rhythmically challening settings would include his work on Horace Silver’s In Pursuit of the 27th Man (1970, Blue Note), Mel Lewis and Friends (1976, A&M), Hal Galper’s Children of the Night (1978, Double-Time), Pat Metheny’s 80/81 (1980, ECM), Steps Ahead’s Modern Times (1984, Elektra), Joe Beck and Friends (1985, DMP), John Abercrombie’s Getting There (1987, ECM), Mike Stern’s Time in Place (1988, Atlantic), Peter Erskine’s Motion Poet (1988, Denon), John Patitucci’s Another World (1993, GRP), John McLaughlin’s The Promise (1995, Verve), McCoy Tyner Trio’s Infinity (1995, Impulse!), Tony Williams’ Wilderness (1996, Ark 21), Elvin Jones’ The Truth: Heard Live at the Blue Note (recorded in 1999 at the Blue Note nightclub in New York and released in 2004 on Half Note) and Randy Brecker’s 34th N Lex (2003, ESC Records).
Consider the dichotomy: Here is a cat who in the same incredibly productive year (1981) played on Chick Corea’s heady Three Quartets AND Chaka Khan’s What Cha’ Gonna Do for Me, Jaco Pastorius’ densely tumultuous opus Word of Mouth AND Chic’s smooth-grooving Take It Off, Mike Mainieri’s sensuous Wanderlust AND Funkadelic’s nasty Electric Spanking of War Babies, Yoko Ono’s cathartic Season of Glass AND Diana Ross’ pop trifle Why Do Fools Fall in Love? Here is a guy who can hang with two of the most imposing figures in their respective fields in Frank Zappa (1978’s Zappa in New York, Rykodisc) and Charles Mingus (1978’s Me, Myself & Eye and Something Like a Bird, both on Atlantic), then turn around and play the background music to a Jane Fonda workout video. This is the same guy who conjured up a dark and somber mood in his evocative orchestral collaboration with composer-arranger Claus Ogerman on Cityscape (1982, Warner Bros.), then throw down a blistering funk solo on “Candy” from Cameo’s mega-selling Word Up! (1986, Mercury). He’s the quintessential player for all seasons, able to suit the mood of his surroundings no matter what the context.
On his initial string of releases as a leader for Impulse!—1986’s Michael Brecker, 1988’s Don’t Try This at Home, 1990’s Now You See It…Now You Don’t—he exhibits breathtaking virtuosity. Brecker put the leader thing on hold to reunite with brother Randy on 1992’s Return of the Brecker Brothers and 1994’s Out of the Loop. His subsequent projects as a leader on the Impulse! label—1996’s Tales From the Hudson (with McCoy Tyner, Pat Metheny, Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette), 1998’s Two Blocks From the Edge (with his working quartet of Joey Calderazzo, James Genus and Jeff “Tain” Watts) and 1999’s organ-fueled Time Is of the Essence (with the great Elvin Jones)—reveal a more mature composer, an even more daring improviser and a seasoned bandleader striking an uncommon accord with his sidemen. In 2001, as if to silence critics put off by the relentlessly dazzling facility and sheer onslaught of notes streaming from his horn, Brecker responded with the sublime Nearness of You: The Ballad Book, featuring Herbie Hancock, Charlie Haden and guest James Taylor singing the poignant title track and reprising his anthemic 1972 hit, “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight.”
2001’s triumphant Directions in Music tour with Herbie Hancock and Roy Hargrove yielded the superb 75th anniversary tribute to Miles Davis and John Coltrane, Directions in Music: Live at Massey Hall (2002, Verve), which included Brecker’s virtuosic solo take on John Coltrane’s famous ballad “Naima.” The canvas for Brecker’s musical vision expanded considerably with his 15-piece Quindectet recording, Wide Angles (2003, Verve), which stands as an artistic pinnacle in Brecker’s exhaustive discography. That acclaimed release was followed by some of Brecker’s most galvanizing performances in concert with an ensemble conducted by arranger and colleague Gil Goldstein.
Newer recordings featuring Mike—Gathering of Spirits by the Saxophone Summit (a 2004 Telarc release teaming Brecker with sax masters Joe Lovano and Dave Liebman), the Odean Pope Saxophone Choir’s Locked & Loaded: Live at the Blue Note (a 2006 release on Half Note Records documenting a December 2004 gig) and Randy Brecker’s Some Skunk Funk (a 2003 live recording with the WDR Big Band, scheduled for a Stateside release on Telarc at the end of June)—reveal the tenor sax titan at the peak of his powers, playing at his freest and most cathartic, channeling some kind of latter day Trane energy in his never-ending quest to expand his palette and push the envelope.
Meanwhile, watch for the release of Best Of collections of Brecker’s Verve output as a leader and the Brecker Brothers’ early years on Arista, coming out as a single-CD compilation on Sony/BMG. Originally Published
