Brecker, Michael

MICHAEL BRECKER

Born: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 29 March 1949

Genre: Jazz

Best-selling album since 1990: Nearness of You: The Ballad Book (2000)

Hit songs since 1990: "African Skies," "Chan's Song," "Naima"

By 1990 Michael Brecker, a seven-time Grammy winner, had established himself as one of the most technically accomplished and widely heard tenor saxophonists in popular music. He spent the 1990s seeking to shore up his credentials as a jazz player. Brecker was among the first reed players of the jazz-rock era as a co-founder of the vocals-horns-guitars-rhythm band Dreams. Brecker gained name recognition when he and his older sibling, the trumpeter Randy, recorded as the Brecker Brothers in 1975. Their father was a part-time jazz pianist, and their sister is a classical pianist. From 1973 to 1974, Michael earned mainstream jazz credits in the group helmed by jazz pianist Horace Silver, but the commercial success of the Brecker Brothers' urbane electric funk style—dubbed "heavy metal bebop"—and Michael's burgeoning career as a studio session player and guest soloist in performance (for Frank Sinatra, Frank Zappa, Joni Mitchell, Bruce Springsteen, and Steely Dan, among others) delayed him from recording an album under his own name until he was thirty-eight years old.

By then the saxophonist was the owner, along with his brother, of the Manhattan jazz club Seventh Avenue South. He had been an influential member of the virtuosic ensemble Steps Ahead, whose members employed the newest instrumental technology; he had championed the Akai Electric Wind Instrument (EWI), a breath-controlled synthesizer. But Brecker was best known for his unwavering saxophone tone, crisp articulation, and dexterity, which allowed him to finger unusually complex melodic lines. These skills were on display on albums featuring the elite of progressive jazz, including Don't Try This at Home (1988) (for which he won his first Grammy) and Now You See It . . . Now You Don't (1990), efforts that gained Brecker an enthusiastic following among saxophone students.

There were dissenting notes in the choir of praise, however. Some critics and hard-core jazz fans dismissed Brecker as purveying technique over expressiveness. While attempting to refute that charge, he remained tirelessly eclectic. He toured with Paul Simon's Afro-Brazilian-steeped tour in support of the album Rhythm of the Saints in 1991 and 1992 and then rejoined Randy for two new Brecker Brothers albums. These garnered multiple Grammy nominations, and Out of the Loop, with Brecker's South African–inflected tune, "African Skies," won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Jazz Performance Instrumental in 1994. The Brothers toured internationally in 1995, introducing contemporary jazz to the People's Republic of China with sold-out performances in Shanghai and Beijing.

Thereafter, Brecker turned his attention to the aggressive acoustic jazz that had excited him in his youth, especially as expressed in the work of the late John Coltrane. He recorded Infinity (1995) with a trio led by Coltrane's piano collaborator McCoy Tyner; the album won a Grammy for Best Instrumental Jazz Performance, Individual or Group (1995). Tyner repaid the favor, playing an unplugged version of "African Skies" on Brecker's Grammy-winning (for Best Instrumental Jazz Performance, Individual or Group) album Tales from the Hudson (1996). On Time Is of the Essence (1999) Brecker worked with Coltrane's drummer, Elvin Jones. He also forged collaborations or strengthened existing creative ties with pianist Herbie Hancock, guitarist Pat Metheny, bassists Dave Holland and Charlie Haden, and drummer Jack DeJohnette.

By the age of fifty, Brecker had clearly harnessed his prodigious energy and facility to eloquent ends. His release Nearness of You: The Ballad Book (2000) was inspired by Coltrane's 1962 album Ballads. Brecker was awarded the Jazz Instrumental Solo Grammy for his poetic statement on Hancock's composition "Chan's Song," while James Taylor won Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for a wistful reprisal of his old hit "Don't Let Me Be Lonely Tonight," around which Brecker wrapped a tender obligatto.

Brecker recorded and toured with Hancock and trumpeter Roy Hargrove in a production called Directions in Music (2002), revisiting repertoire associated with Coltrane and Miles Davis. He was nominated for a Grammy for his unaccompanied rendition on that album of Coltrane's challenging ballad "Naima," and he was favorably cited for his unadorned but exalted chorus of "America the Beautiful" on Charlie Haden's American Dreams (2002). From fusion roots Michael Brecker has developed into an ardent upholder of American standards.

SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY:

Now You See It . . . Now You Don't (Impulse!, 1990); Return of the Brecker Brothers (GRP, 1992); Out of the Loop (GRP, 1994); Tales from the Hudson (Impulse!, 1996); Two Blocks from the Edge (Impulse!, 1997); Time Is of the Essence (Verve, 1998); Nearness of You: The Ballad Book (2000); Directions in Music (Verve, 2002).

howard mandel