For Michael Brecker

I recall Gil Evans being interviewed on Miles Davis for some documentary or other a number of years back. His main point was that sound innovators, people who changed the very nature of the sound of the instrument were rare indeed, and that Miles (of course) was one of those extremely rare diamonds. I write this on Monday, two days after hearing of the death of Michael Brecker and can’t help but observe that Michael fell into that category as well. An incredibly small # of musicians have changed the way most of us play and think about this or any music, and Michael was one of the chosen few.

I heard about his passing as I walked into the exhibit hall at the IAJE in Manhattan and it was a moment of utter shock to get the news. I needed to be alone for some time and even wondered how I would be able to talk with people in what is a pretty intense and self-promoting atmosphere at times. Then I decided to continue on in to the maze of booths. After all, who would possibly understand the collective and individual loss more than my fellow jazz monks? As terrible as it was to know he was gone (as was Alice Coltrane, rest her soul), it seemed completely right in some way to be here, at the epicenter of the jazz universe, with thousands of others who would understand who had been taken away better than virtually anyone else we could be with. As I walked around, I found myself in the sad position of telling some friends about it, while others already new. Sometimes, we just had to look at each other and we both knew we knew. Sometimes, the simple phrase “you’ve heard?” was all we needed to say. There was a true melancholy infusing the enormous exhibit space, the hotel lobbies and the bars where various performances were going on. Most of us were reflecting on the day, lost in our sadness and gratitude that Brecker had been in the musical world and remembering him and what he had meant to each of us. My heart went out especially to Lieb, manfully holding court in his booth as well-intentioned strangers and near strangers offered their sympathies to him. I remember hoping he could find a space and time to get away to be with his own thoughts for a man who had become almost a brother to him.




Even though we had all known about Michael’s illness for years it was a profoundly sad moment. We had all grown to love him in our own way, and, like every self-respecting musician I know of Jewish descent (and many non-Jews), I got tested in the vain hope that I was a match. How could ANY sax player make a different choice? Simply put, as a friend of mine observed, Michael is in the DNA of every saxophonist of the past 30 years, easily the most universally influential jazz musician since Coltrane. Even those who consciously and deliberately chose another path were doing so in reaction to Michael. It was said of Michael’s very close friend, Joe Lovano, that one reason he worked so much was that he was the “anti-Brecker” stylistically, and people were tired of all the pallid Brecker clones out there, esp. in the mid-1980s. No coincidence that three genuine originals like Brecker, Liebman and Lovano were drawn to play together in the last few years Michael was with us.

On a personal level, I got to know Michael just a little, and felt privileged to have been able to do so. My friends James Genus and Rodney Holmes were playing with the Brecker Brothers and James went on to play in Mike’s quartet for a number of years. As well, my friend Steve Smith was very close with Michael, as was my friend and mentor Lieb. In those contexts and others, I got to see him in more relaxed settings, away from the adoring mobs of sax players who flocked to his gigs. Mike didn’t want to be anybody’s hero or icon. As a matter of fact, it was only when I was able to step past my own stark musical adulation and speak about the mutual pitfalls and interests that all sax players and humans have that I was able to connect with him on a human level. He was witty, fun-loving, thoughtful, curious, extremely self-deprecating and generous. To witness such an unimaginably virtuosic innovator being almost unthinkably humble about his gifts was a lesson learned. It was also consistent with what I have observed again and again. The truly good and great musicians are often the most open and happy and supportive of other good musicians (famous or not). They know their gifts and have no real compulsion to either advertise them or run down others.
He was kind enough to write nice things about a couple of my records and my music, an altruism he replicated with dozens and dozens of other musicians. I will always be grateful and humbled that he did so, and that he took the time to email me on occasion, even during his wrenchingly difficult illness.

What was it about his playing that was so compelling? Well, words are always an imperfect vehicle for describing a discreet language like music, so forgive my efforts, but here’s how I see it:

I remember the first time I ever heard him play. It was on Billy Cobham’s Crossroads record, and there was a solo sax break with drums. Mike’s combination of a searingly beautiful, slightly edgier, more soulfunk Trane sound, utterly precise and surefooted rhythm, incorporation of Trane’s (and I later discovered his, Liebman and Grossman’s innovations forged in the ferment of late 1960s early 1970s NYC) harmonic breakthroughs, and an unprecedented level of virtuosic fire – these were all there then and I still hear them as the hallmarks of his unique and massively pervasive presence in our collective saxophone unconscious.

Mike’s playing, while eons-deep in the language of Trane, as well as the great soul jazz players, was also completely contemporary and present-day. I have never heard a more exciting sax soloist, and he had the ability, like all transcendent jazz artists, to communicate on both the head and the heart level, reaching layman, master musicians and everyone in-between. Mike’s combination of perfect intonation, comprehensive mastery of every facet of the horn, unprecedented virtuosity, incredible instinct for building and developing a solo into a Bacchanalian frenzy of precise intensity, all of these were sui generis. He spawned years and years of fervent disciples, and I can think of at least 25 or so current tenor players who owe their living as international jazz players to their unadulterated plagiarism of Brecker. I myself am a reformed Breckerholic, ever grateful to Dave Liebman for steering me away from the path of slavish imitation at an early enough age. I am reminded of my wise composition teacher Robert Didomenica’s adage about Mozart and I tell my students the same thing about Michael. “You can’t be Michael Brecker. He’s already done that. You have to be yourself.”

I am in a position now where I hear and, fairly regularly, teach some of the beautiful hot house flowers coming up through the specialized schools. What with all the honors bands, grammy bands, special camps, festivals, myriad transcription books, play-a-longs, meticulously presented fake books, method books, etc, etc, the students have so much more opportunity and can get there so much quicker than we could. And yet…and yet. I think of the massive variety of work experience Brecker’s generation and even mine had, from blues dives to r& B joints, to wedding gigs, to rock clubs, and I sometimes think that our antisepticising and museumising of the music has taken something sacred and profane out of it. Michael’s marriage of the urgency and rawness of blues, soul and funk with the melodicism and soaring sound of pop and the high church of John Coltrane is the epitome of what I think a modern musician should be. We need to get some of that blood and blues so well-shouted by Michael Brecker back into the music before it all becomes precious temperature-controlled orchids disconnected from the wilderness and the urgent cry which infuses all vital music with its life pulse.

Even if I had never gotten to know him, Mike Brecker’s playing would have transformed my life as it changed the musical lives of so many countless others. His brilliance, universal sound, unparalleled virtuosity and melding of Trane, funk-soul and the lofts changed the saxophone, changed music and, by doing so, changed the world. Michael Brecker will be missed but he will live on through all of us. He is in the DNA of everyone who plays and listens to music today.