Jazz Articles about Michael Brecker

About Michael Brecker

Play This!

While the song “Timeline" is structured as a straightforward minor blues, it is nonetheless attention-grabbing and inspiring, for several reasons. First, Michael Brecker, Pat Metheny, Larry Goldings and Elvin Jones are the epitome of musicality, whether appreciated individually or as a unit. Then there is Metheny's composition: just when the listener becomes hooked on the catchy variations in the head, the band slides into a multi-bar, dotted-quarter, 11th chord progression in the chorus that lifts you out of 4/4 time ...

Liner Notes

Ron Carter: Anything Goes

by Arnaldo DeSouteiro
July 11, 2024

Ronald Levin Carter (born Ferndale, Michigan, on May 4, 1937) needs no introduction. Let's just say that he is the bassist's bassist. On Ron's hands, the bass and the man become the same entity, the same person. Played by Ron Carter, the acoustic bass sounds like... Ron Carter! That's why he is one of the three top bassists in the music history. However, if Ron needs no introduction, his Anything Goes album does. Recorded on June & July, ...

Liner Notes

Hal Galper Quintet: Live at the Berlin Philharmonic 1977

by Paul Rauch
February 19, 2023

Sullivan County, New York, is a long way from the grind of the jazz scene in New York City. For iconic pianist Hal Galper, it has been home for some forty five years. The area has long drawn artists attracted to its rural lifestyle, and quick access to the city. For Galper, his move represented a bit of a repose lifestyle-wise, after spending many years on the road and in the studio with the likes of Chet Baker, Cannonball Adderly ...

Liner Notes

Steve Khan: Arrows

by AAJ Staff
January 25, 2023

By Steve Khan With The Blue Man not selling as well as Tightrope, Dr. George Butler requested that I have a co-producer for the next CD. I was lucky to be able to land the engineering / production talents of my old and dear friend, Elliot Scheiner. Elliot and I had recorded together on countless sessions, but perhaps most people link us together because it was Elliot who recommended me to Donald Fagen and Walter Becker for AJA, which, of ...

Book Excerpts

Ode to a Tenor Titan

by Bill Milkowski
March 22, 2022

The following is an excerpt from Chapter 8, “Going Solo, The Pittbull and The EWI" from Bill Milkowski's Ode to a Tenor Titan: The Life and Times and Music of Michael Brecker (Backbeat Books, 2022). By early 1986, Michael began formulating plans for his long-overdue solo debut. He was 37, a universally respected figure and acknowledged 'monster' player admired by fellow musicians from the pop, rock and jazz worlds. He had ridden to fame through the '70s ...

Book Review

Michael Brecker: Ode to a Tenor Titan

by Kyle Simpler
February 25, 2022

Ode to a Tenor Titan Bill Milkowski 408 Pages ISBN: # 978-1-4930-5376-6 Backbeat Books 2021 By the summer of 2005, most people in the jazz world knew that legendary tenor saxophonist Michael Brecker was suffering from a serious medical condition. He had been diagnosed with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), a pre-leukemia bone marrow disorder, and his wife, Susan, was desperately trying to find someone with a bone marrow match who would provide the possibility ...

Radio & Podcasts

Michael Brecker, Rodney Holmes, Brett Garsed, and from the '70s Sonny Fortune, Lee Ritenour and George Duke

by Len Davis
October 22, 2021

Michael Brecker from his album Wide Angles, drummer Rodney Holmes, Sonny Fortune, Lee Ritenour and George Duke.Playlist Michael Brecker"Modus Operandi" from Wide Angles (Verve) 00:00 Rodney Holmes “The Bronx Experiment" from Twelve months of October (Self Produced 06:13 Uncle Moe's Space Ranch “[email protected]" from Uncle Moe's Space Ranch (Tone Centre) 12:22 Dirty Martini “Miss You" from Live at Baked Potato (Self Produced) 18:31 Tom Scott and LA Express “Rock Island Rocket" from Tom Cat (Record Label) 24:39 Sonny ...