Michael Brecker

Michael BreckerMichael Breckerマイケル・ブレッカー appeared on approximately 900 recordings — not just jazz, but pop and rock sessions where someone needed saxophone done right. He appeared on Pat MethenyPat Methenyパット・メセニー's 80/8180/81Pat Metheny · 1980 (1980) and released his own debut in 1987. He died of leukemia in 2007 at 57, having won 15 Grammy Awards.

August 15, 1998, Newport Jazz Festival. Full concert by Michael BreckerMichael BreckerMichael Brecker · 1987. Official Music Vault recording. One of the most in-demand tenor saxophonists in jazz and fusion across the 1980s and 90s.

August 16, 1987, Newport Jazz Festival. Michael BreckerMichael BreckerMichael Brecker · 1987 Band featuring Joey CalderazzoJoey Calderazzoジョーイ・カルデラッツォ on piano. Official Music Vault recording.

Billy CobhamBilly Cobhamビリー・コブハム's 1973 album SpectrumSpectrumBilly Cobham · 1973 remains one of the most influential jazz-rock fusion recordings. With Tommy Bolin, Jan Hammer, Leland Sklar, Joe Farrell, and Ron Carter on the roster, Billy CobhamBilly Cobhamビリー・コブハム's powerful drumming defined the vocabulary of fusion drumming.

Pat Metheny first heard Michael Brecker's tenor not on a jazz record but on a pop hit pouring out of a car radio at a big intersection. The two would later become close collaborators — but the introduction came over the airwaves, through pop.

Pilgrimage (2007) was the last record Michael Brecker made, cut while he was dying. Pat Metheny, who played guitar on it, said Brecker had never sounded better—that a new element, a kind of seriousness in every gesture, had entered his playing. The illness deepened it rather than thinning it out.

On 80/81 (1980), Michael Brecker — then the most in-demand studio saxophonist in New York, and heard as a fusion player — is trading with Dewey Redman and Charlie Haden, both out of the free jazz world. Pat Metheny wrote all of the material.

Michael Brecker spent more than a decade as one of the most in-demand session saxophonists in pop and jazz alike, yet didn't release an album under his own name until 1987, just before turning 40. The bassist he brought in for that belated debut was Charlie Haden.