[Dixielandjazz] Michael Brecker Memorial

[Steve Barbone]

Not OKOM so delete now if not interested in a broader definition of jazz.

This must have been a poignant memorial, on Fat Tuesday evening, to the late
Michael Brecker, one of Philadelphia's finest jazz musicians. He was, to
quote a Sidney Bechet phrase, "a musicianeer".

Rest in peace, Michael Brecker.

Steve Barbone


Music Review | Michael Brecker Memorial
Celebrating a Saxophonist¹s Art and Heart

NY TIMES - By BEN RATLIFF - February 22, 2007

The memorial program for the saxophonist Michael Brecker that filled Town
Hall on Tuesday night kept landing on the theme of generosity. Mr. Brecker
died of leukemia on Jan. 13 at 57. During his illness he enlisted family
members and friends in sending out a call for bone-marrow donors ‹ not just
for himself ‹ that resulted in tens of thousands of donor registrations. His
friends in jazz and pop music all implied that this wasn¹t just an isolated
case of conscientiousness.

Mr. Brecker, a virtuosic musician, was soft-spoken and didn¹t look to score
points on his magnanimity. James Taylor, who sent a testimonial on film from
San Francisco, said that Mr. Brecker had saved his life when Mr. Taylor was
quitting drugs. (Mr. Brecker had been a drug user in the 1970s and helped
treat substance abusers after he went clean in the early 1980s.) ³I
identified so closely with Michael,² Mr. Taylor said, looking shaken. ³The
fact that he managed to turn his life around and go forward made it possible
for me to do it too.²

The saxophonist Dave Liebman talked about a Samaritan impulse as something
he and Mr. Brecker shared, which he said came in part from their urban
Jewish upbringing ‹ he in Brooklyn, Mr. Brecker in Philadelphia. ³There was
also an unspoken agreement that we should do something good for humanity,²
he said.

Mr. Brecker¹s wife, Susan, had asked that there be no saxophone playing in
the performances. So Mr. Liebman played a piece, composed by Mr. Brecker, on
a small wooden flute. Pat Metheny played his ³Every Day (I Thank You)² on
acoustic guitar, full of open ringing notes.

Mr. Brecker¹s brother, the trumpeter Randy Brecker, played ³Midnight
Voyage,² a piece from a recent Michael Brecker album, with a quartet
including the pianist Joey Calderazzo, the bassist James Genus and the
drummer Jeff Watts. And the pianist Herbie Hancock performed one of his own
pieces, ³Chan¹s Song,² with John Patitucci on bass and Jack DeJohnette on
drums.

But his colleagues also joked that Mr. Brecker could be unintentionally
cruel. ³The most treacherous position in jazz,² Mr. Metheny said, ³was being
the guy on the bandstand who has to take a solo right after Mike Brecker.²

Randy Brecker told a similar story, about one of the hundreds of recording
sessions at which he had been hired to work alongside his brother. Michael,
he said, came to work straight from the airport after a long flight, not
having had time to read the music. He was asked by the producer to build a
solo through a long two-chord vamp. One could see where this was going:
Michael¹s solo was of disturbingly high quality, and Randy was asked to take
it from there. 

Mr. Liebman also brought up a less technical, more philosophical point about
Mr. Brecker¹s career: his willingness ‹ unusual, for someone so highly
accomplished in jazz ‹ to work regularly in pop. He did so, Mr. Liebman
said, ³without any shame or guilt.²

A short film about Mr. Brecker¹s career brought this point home as well. He
was seen with recent bands, playing dense, complex jazz in the post-Coltrane
tradition; then, in the 1970s, playing fusion and funk; then as a sideman
with Joni Mitchell and Paul Simon.

Mr. Simon himself emerged to sing ³Still Crazy After All These Years,² one
of the pop hits that bore a famous Michael Brecker solo, with Mr. Hancock on
electric piano. Then the memorial closed with chanting.

Mr. Hancock explained that Mr. Brecker had started practicing Buddhism nine
months before his death, and joined Soka Gakkai International, the
American-based group associated with Nichiren Buddhism, three months later.
Mr. Hancock, the saxophonist Wayne Shorter and the bassist Buster Williams,
who all practice the same form of Buddhism, as well as Mr. Brecker¹s son,
Sam, went onstage, sat in a line with their backs to the audience while
facing a painted scroll in a wooden shrine, and chanted,
³Nam-myoho-renge-kyo² for five minutes.

For the next hour and a half, after the hall cleared, musicians hung out by
the doors of the theater, trading stories.