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.