Breckers' band brings joy to jazz fans

Breckers' band brings joy to jazz fans

By Paul W. Blair

JAKARTA (JP): Music listeners who have already had a chance to
become familiar with Out of the Loop, the newest recording by the
Brecker Brothers, will be intrigued to see some of the pieces
from that album performed live by their band this week in
Jakarta.

For one thing, it's clear that this six-man ensemble has no
trouble bringing the snap and polish of their recorded versions
to their live shows. Co-leader Michael Brecker notes that Out of
the Loop was done more or less live-in-the-studio in real time,
as opposed to the group's previous album (Return of the Brecker
Brothers), which featured much more overdubbing of individual
parts and considerable post-production tweaking of the ensemble
sound.

The Brecker Brothers have been appearing since Monday evening
at Jamz, across from Blok M Plaza in Kebayoran Baru, and will
continue there through tomorrow night. Jamz is, in fact, an
excellent place to see and hear a band of this sort. Jamz is also
probably the most intimate venue the quintet has played during
its current Asian swing, which has also included stops in Japan,
Hong Kong, Taiwan and China. They'll head home to U.S. next week.

It's also a surprise to discover that Michael Brecker, who
plays tenor saxophone most of the time onstage, is able to
approximate the sounds of flute, soprano saxophone and even
guitar by blowing into an electronic device that somewhat
resembles the top two-thirds of a Porsche-Design clarinet.

The device is, in fact, something called an Akai EWI
(pronounced "Eee-wee") and isn't even an instrument in the
conventional sense because it makes no sound on its own.
Instead, it serves to initiate the notes generated by the
synthesizer into which it is connected. Michael employs the EWI
mostly for tonal coloration on ensemble passages, then picks up
his tenor for extended soloing.

Possibilities

"I hated the sound I got out of the EWI when I first tried it
a few years ago," he says. "But then my wife came into the room
and pushed a button or two on the control panel. Suddenly I began
to hear the possibilities. In a way, working with the EWI has
actually reinforced my love for the sound of the saxophone, which
really can't be reproduced accurately by any electronic
instrument because its wave patterns are so complex. I guess
that's why no two saxophonists really ever sound alike."

Randy Brecker, the trumpet-playing brother (and the younger by
four years), has worked with many jazz and pop notables over the
years. He's been a member of Clark Terry's big band, Blood Sweat
& Tears and Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. He teamed with Michael
as the front line in one of Horace Silver's best quintets and has
been part of a repertory unit that performs the compositions of
Charles Mingus. Michael, meanwhile, was a founding member of the
group known in its various incarnations as Steps and Steps Ahead.

The pair won their first acclaim as co-founders of Dreams, an
influential fusion band of the early 1970s. Then beginning in
1975, they recorded the first of what turned out to be a series
of six best-selling Brecker Brothers albums. Over the years, the
brothers have also appeared as guest players on literally
hundreds of other artists' albums.

GRP, their current record label, characterizes the Brecker
Brothers' approach as "contemporary urban-oriented jazz, with
elements of jazz, funk and rock. "I've never been quite certain
what the term `urban-contemporary' meant and have always wondered
if the music would somehow sound different if heard in a small
rural village. Nevertheless, I find Out of the Loop to be a
delight all the way through.

The opening track is Slang, a Michael Brecker original that's
surely one of the album's high points. It's also a tune they're
featuring in their sets at Jamz. Equally intriguing is And Then
She Wept, a lush ballad written by Randy Brecker that features
his flugelhorn and takes some unexpected turns along the way.
With the Brecker Brothers for their first visit to Jakarta are
the same four musicians who recorded their most recent album with
them: Dean Brown on guitar, George Whitty on keyboards, James
Genus on bass and Rodney Holmes playing drums. Among the tunes
they're featuring at Jamz this week are Spherical (a witty
tribute to Thelonious Monk from their previous album), Little
Miss P (an up-tempo number that sails along in splendid bebop
style) and Inside Out (on which Whitty approximates the sound and
feeling of a Hammond B-3 organ).

Perhaps the most pop-oriented tracks on Out of the Loop are
Scrunch, with a funk beat certain to delight dancers, and When It
Was built on a catchy little seven-note riff and reminiscent of
some of Miles Davis' mid-1980s work. Music of this kind is often
derided as mere "ear candy." In this case, though, it's
confection of the highest quality, full of harmonic and rhythmic
interest. That's why I'd especially urge Jakarta's hard-core jazz
fans to catch this group before they get away.