{"id":435,"date":"2012-01-17T08:00:47","date_gmt":"2012-01-17T12:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelteager.com\/blog\/?p=435"},"modified":"2014-02-16T12:46:31","modified_gmt":"2014-02-16T16:46:31","slug":"mth-v-michael-brecker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelteager.com\/blog\/2012\/01\/17\/mth-v-michael-brecker\/","title":{"rendered":"MTH-V: Michael Brecker"},"content":{"rendered":"

This past Friday (01.13) marked the fifth anniversary of Michael Brecker<\/a>‘s death<\/a>. His music and musicianship definitely touches me still. Not only was he one of the tenor saxophone’s greatest technicians, but he played with a deep intensity and emotional to match.<\/p>\n

Of the many reasons to love Michael’s playing and ethic, one that particularly stands out to me is his stylistic versatility, having attained a great degree of commercial success in pop music while maintaining a career as a heavy, widely-respected jazz musician. His funk and fusion work with his brother Randy in the Brecker Brothers<\/a> is of course widely known to most musicians, but his work with James Taylor<\/a>, Joni Mitchell<\/a> (if you aren’t familiar with Shadows and Light<\/a>, go buy it right now), and Paul Simon<\/a> exposed his name and playing to a much wider audience. (His solo on James Taylor’s “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight” is classic.) And then of course his more straight ahead and avant-garde jazz roots shone brightly in his solo work and that with his longtime collaborators in Saxophone Summit<\/a>. (His playing was evidence of his deep love for Coltrane’s late period. In fact, it made his passing the day after<\/a> Alice Coltrane<\/a>‘s death\u00a0that much more eerie.)<\/p>\n

While there are hundreds of videos I could choose from, I’ve chosen only a few. This first video is from a Vienna performance of Herbie’s “The Sorcerer” with Herbie Hancock<\/a>, Roy Hargrove<\/a>, bassist George Mraz<\/a>, and drummer Willie Jones III<\/a>. I saw Michael Brecker live with a variation of this band (with bassist Scott Colley<\/a> and the always intense Terri Lyne Carrington<\/a> on drums) a couple months before his disease was made public. Brecker was quite pale, and, though he spent much of the night sitting on a stool or offstage when not playing, he absolutely destroyed Detroit’s Orchestra Hall. Enjoy Herbie ripping it up at the top; Brecker’s solo starts at 3:55.
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