Directions in Music

Directions in Music (2001) was Hancock's tribute to Miles Davis and John Coltrane. Placing HargroveRoy Hargroveロイ・ハーグローブ — from the trumpet lineage — alongside Brecker, who had redefined the post-bop saxophone sound, was deliberate. Intergenerational transmission was the album's real subject.

Pilgrimage (2007) was the last album Brecker recorded, in the year he died, with Herbie Hancock on piano. Of a record made at the edge of death, Hancock said: 'That record is alive—one hundred percent, more than alive, Michael Brecker.' The final document was the most alive.

Roy Hargrove made his name in the early-1990s hard-bop revival as one of jazz's 'Young Lions,' with no real background in Latin music. Yet in 1997 it was Habana, a session with Cuban musicians, that won him a Grammy for Best Latin Jazz Performance.