Pilgrimage

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.