This article originally appeared in Saxophone Journal, May/June 2007. Volume 31, No. 5
Michael Brecker’s public battle with myelodysplastic syndrome and leukemia had given us time to prepare ourselves for what we had hoped would not come, despite the odds against him. We had come to view him as something beyond a mortal. I can hardly believe that he is gone. Brecker's colleagues, some of the greatest musicians of our time, will all have something to say. While I defer to those greats that shared the bandstand with him, I still feel compelled to say something about my personal relationship with Michael Brecker’s music. It may be selfish for me to say anything at all, to somehow diminish his light by shining it on myself, but I am nonetheless compelled, if only by a need to express my solemn gratitude to a man that provided endless inspiration in my musical youth.
Without cliché, Michael Brecker was a true titan of the tenor saxophone. In sound, style, and technique, he was a one-man tenor revolution. It was as if Coltrane, Paganini, and Hendrix had been rolled into one super-musician. There isn't a tenor saxophonist alive, at least one who has found their voice in the last twenty-five years, that wasn’t somehow affected by Brecker's gravitational force. Jazz composers scrambled to understand, and emulate, his innovative writing (Maria Schneider's Wyrgly immediately comes to mind). Whether you tried to be more like him, or less like him (to avoid unfavorable comparison), Michael Brecker was the 800 lb. gorilla. He was the Charlie Parker of the last quarter-century. You loved his music, or you hated it, but you couldn't avoid it. I met guys that bought their Selmer Mark VI tenors because the serial numbers were close to His. They paid big bucks to play His mouthpiece, and I even remember seeing reeds with His name on them (that sold for double what other reeds went for). Especially in the late eighties and early nineties, you could say “him” to a sax player, and they knew you meant Michael Brecker.
My first experience with Brecker, other than incidental exposure to his inescapably prolific recording career, was his self-titled debut on Impulse. Sea Glass grabbed me right away, in that I had never heard anything like it. It was like an anthem, majestically announcing the new new thing. As I listened in my dorm room at the University of Massachusetts, I immediately felt that my musical direction was about to change because of this music. By the time Syzygy started, I was on my feet. The sense of awe widened as I made my way through The Cost of Living and Original Rays. It was like a torpedo had struck me between the ears. I didn’t even own a CD player, but I started buying Michael Brecker CD’s. When I listened to the opening track on “Don't Try This At Home,” Itsbynne Reel . . . I have no words for how awestruck I was. Everything about that track blew me out of the water. I listened to it over and over, and I didn’t make it to the second track until the following day. It was the same feeling that I had after hearing Coltrane’s Giant Steps. I couldn’t get it out of my head. After that, I began taking piano more seriously, so I could figure out how to emulate the harmonies I was hearing. I started practicing scales and patterns using alternate fingerings, to create Brecker-like technical effects. I changed mouthpieces, to focus my sound. I practiced scales a full octave above palm-key F. I wrote my own version of Itsbynne Reel, called Pay the Fiddler. At the encouragement of my arranging teacher, Jeff Holmes, I wrote a big band arrangement of Pay the Fiddler, which later became the title track of the UMASS Jazz Ensemble CD. Within a couple of years, I won the downbeat award for best collegiate jazz soloist, partially based upon my recording of Fiddler. Itsbynne Reel turbo charged me down the path that would lead to a successful career in music. I practiced those Brecker licks until I had tendonitis. I can still hear my old Franz metronome clanking away as I chugged through rapid-fire harmonics into the altissimo. It was a rite of passage.
All this inspiration, and productivity came at a price. I was soon unable to play without immediately calling attention to my master. I struggled to overcome the influence, but Brecker was like a drug habit that I couldn't kick. No matter how I tried, my solos were always peppered with Breckerisms. In desperation, I put all my CD's in a box and taped it shut (and I’m not making that up). I focused on pre-Brecker tenor players for my studies. Finally, I made an extreme mouthpiece change and worked on playing in the lower register, just to avoid sounding like Mike. It literally took me nine years to overcome the overwhelming influence of Michael Brecker. But it is important to note that, both in striving towards him, and away from him, I was artistically transformed for the better. His music opened my ears and my imagination.
I recall seeing him live at Monroe Community College in upstate New York. He was on tour promoting “Tales from the Hudson.” It was a moderately sized hall, and I had a seat close enough to see Brecker very clearly. Everything about his playing was textbook perfection. He stood perfectly straight with no signs of tension. His embouchure was firm but flexible, and every note sounded as if it emanated from his vocal chords. You were unaware of reeds or mouthpieces; there was no machinery in the way. He played like he was speaking to you, directly and with his own, human voice. It blew your hair back. He used fingerings that I had never thought of, and I had to watch intently because his fingers hardly seemed to move at all. The poise and grace of his delivery belied the ferocity of what came out of the horn. I remember that the audience sighed, gasped, and even laughed in wonder and amazement. I have heard a handful of musicians with technical facility close to Brecker’s, but he had a way of using it to express something more than just sublime craftsmanship. When the shock wore off, he had a creativity and musicality that kept you interested. He was offering something that you simply couldn’t get anywhere else . . . something that will never be available again. We can only be grateful for the many brilliant recordings he leaves behind.
As much as I remember seeing him live, my favorite Brecker-related moment came years later. It was a Sunday evening and my phone rang a little later than usual. When I picked up, I heard the nervous giggling of a group of my students. They were calling me from their first Michael Brecker concert, and he was about to go on. I laughed and told them to soak up every sound. I knew exactly how excited they were, and on Monday morning, I recognized the dazed look of awe in their eyes. Yet another generation was under his spell. It gives me pause to think that none of my future students will experience a Michael Brecker concert. Even as I write, another of my students is holed up in a basement somewhere, practicing Brecker’s unaccompanied performance of Naima. I cannot imagine being a student of the saxophone and not studying Michael Brecker. In a world of clones, drones, and charlatans, he was the rarified real deal.
I have had a lot of heavy influences in my career, but Brecker was in his prime when I was at the height of my personal search. When I was his disciple, he was on the cutting edge, which is what makes all of this so vivid for me. Unwrapping a new Michael Brecker CD always had me trembling with anticipation. I could never get the damned shrink wrap off quickly enough. Waiting for the disc to spin up and reveal the first track was an experience that has had few parallels for me. I can only imagine that he felt the same way, dropping the needle on a newly released Coltrane record. In both cases, each new piece of music contained a bit of secret code that could only be cracked in the shed, and only if you had the chops.
If Brecker had died in the middle of his prime, we would perhaps exalt him to an even higher place. This is often the case, especially with folks like John Coltrane, Clifford Brown, and Scott LaFaro. We had just enough time to embrace them before they were ripped away, leaving us to wonder what the future would have held. Michael Brecker lived long enough for his brilliance to fall somewhat out of fashion. If you go to New York, almost every young tenor player is on a rubber mouthpiece. I have no doubt that this is in response to the need to NOT sound like a Brecker clone. Most everyone gave up trying to play EWI years ago. His force was so dominant, you simply had to deal with it.
Those CD’s from my younger days, and the more recent ones, are sitting in a stack in front of my computer monitor as I write this essay. Hopefully everyone knows the cover of “Don’t Try This At Home,” where he is balancing the saxophone on one finger. As if by some significant sign from the cosmos, that CD is sitting on top of the pile but showing the back cover. The saxophone floats in air, with Brecker’s image removed from the photo. I couldn’t imagine a more fitting metaphor. Travel in peace Michael. You will never be forgotten. §
