Michael Brecker's leader album
Michael Brecker
Tenor Saxophone / Saxophone / Flute
Michael Brecker
(1949–2007)
United States
Michael Brecker (1949–2007) — Tenor Saxophone, Saxophone. Led Michael Brecker, Don't Try This At Home, Select Live Saxophone Workshop 1989. Worked with Herbie Hancock, Randy Brecker, Don Alias.
Other saxophonists say his technique simply cannot be copied — yet he never sounds mechanical. He absorbed rock and funk alongside jazz, and pushed the possibilities of the saxophone into territory it had never occupied. A studio giant and bandleader who redefined what the instrument could be.
Michael Brecker's leader album
Billy Cobham
Michael Brecker's albums
Directions in Music (2001) was Hancock's tribute to Miles Davis and John Coltrane. Placing Hargrove
Herbie HancockMichael Brecker's videos
August 15, 1998, Newport Jazz Festival. Full concert by Michael Brecker
Michael Brecker's videos
August 16, 1987, Newport Jazz Festival. Michael Brecker
Michael Brecker's albums
80/81
Michael Brecker's leader album
On Pat Metheny's ECM date 80/81 (1980), two tenors stood side by side: Michael Brecker, by then a fusion and pop studio staple, and Dewey Redman, straight out of the free-jazz lineage. Pairing the studio ace with the avant-garde tenor was the whole point of the record.
— Statement stmt-jack-dejohnette-on-michael-brecker
Michael Brecker's leader album
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.
— Statement stmt-pat-metheny-on-michael-brecker
Michael Brecker's leader album
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.
— Statement stmt-pat-metheny-on-michael-brecker-2
Michael Brecker's albums
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.
— Statement stmt-herbie-hancock-on-michael-brecker
Michael Brecker's albums
In 1976, a still largely unknown Jaco Pastorius played bass on Joni Mitchell's folk album Hejira — the same year he released his own debut and joined Weather Report. His avant-garde fretless playing found its way onto one of the era's defining singer-songwriter records.
— Statement stmt-michael-brecker-on-joni-mitchell
Joni Mitchell
Jaco Pastorius
Don AliasMichael Brecker's albums
Don Alias was brought to Bitches Brew (1970) as a percussionist, but on "Miles Runs the Voodoo Down" he is the one at the drum kit — the New Orleans-flavored beat was his idea, and the leader told him to play it himself.
— Statement stmt-jack-dejohnette-on-don-alias
John Scofield
Dave HollandMichael Brecker said
The band with Joni Mitchell, Shadows and Light Band, was really extraordinary. It consisted of Jaco, Pat Metheny, myself, Don Alias and Lyle Mays and Joni, of course.
Brecker looking back on Joni Mitchell's Shadows and Light band.
↗ Guitar World
How Joni Mitchell formed an unlikely partnership with Jaco Pastorius
2025-04-17
About Michael Brecker
The tours on that were really some fantastic playing from everybody, but just hearing the styles of Dewey and Michael, and (they) both admired each other.
On the contrasting tenor styles of Michael Brecker and Dewey Redman during the tours for Pat Metheny's 1980 album 80/81.
↗ Smithsonian Jazz Oral History Program
Jack DeJohnette NEA Jazz Master Interview
2011-11-10
About Michael Brecker
We also played together on Herbie's New Standards, that was a great recording which featured Michael Brecker, John Scofield, Dave Holland, myself and Don Alias.
Listing his work with percussionist Don Alias, including Herbie Hancock's The New Standard (1995).
↗ Smithsonian Jazz Oral History Program
Jack DeJohnette NEA Jazz Master Interview
2011-11-10
About Michael Brecker
I was driving by a major intersection in my town. On the radio was the James Taylor single 'Don't Let Me Be Lonely Tonight' with this tenor player on it.
Metheny recalls the moment he first heard Brecker's tenor, on James Taylor's record.
↗ NPR
Brecker's 'Pilgrimage' a Welcome, Not a Farewell
2007-06-18
About Michael Brecker
He sounds better than ever. I would say that there's a new component in Mike's playing after all of this, a certain kind of seriousness that he's putting into each gesture.
Metheny speaking during the sessions for Brecker's final album Pilgrimage, after his cancer treatment.
↗ NPR
Brecker's 'Pilgrimage' a Welcome, Not a Farewell
2007-06-18
About Michael Brecker
That record is alive, a hundred percent or more alive Michael Brecker.
Hancock on what Brecker left on the posthumously released album Pilgrimage.
↗ NPR Weekend Edition Sunday
Jazz Great Brecker: A 'Pilgrimage' Before Dying
2007-05-27