I appreciate the passion in your writing about listening. But as for the title, fog is analog.
As a saxophonist, the link I think about between Coltrane and Brecker is practice. Lots and lots of practice.
And the difference in the link is what they practiced. Coltrane included musics of many cultures in his practice, compositions, and performances - spirituals, ragas, scales from Africa, Middle East, Asia, Europe, Eastern Europe, South America, etc. but I haven't seen that same wide scope in what I know of musical Brecker's disciplined diet.
Coltrane was on a path to transcend his lived experience through becoming a disciple of Ravi Shankar. Brecker's path did not cross into becoming a student of another master.
Oh, Bret! I read your words and heard my sister Lili-"when I sing, I want to sound like a saxophone." Her muse id Michael Brecker. I saw him every time he played in NY, particularly in his and Randy's club, "7th Avenue South." It was school for me, with Don Grolnick as his pianist (I play the piano) and the rest was church. On top of it all, he was the nicest person. I am certain Lili will write a post. Thank you, Bret. This article took me "there."
My sister Barbara has for two days now been after me “Did you read Bret’s post about Trane and Mike? You need to read it”. I read it at last. Brilliant depiction of Michael Brecker’s playing and describing that he was not copying or mimicking. If you have any kind of “ears” you “hear” it. So many times I saw him live and could remember snippets of his solo that pierced through me like an arrow and shattered me in pieces and when I was put together whole again, I was different; a whole better “me”. As a singer and musician and one highly influenced by jazz I don’t hear melodies or scat sing like most. What I hear in my head is the tenor saxophone. Maybe it’s cause my Mom played Coltrane records at home when I was a kid, but definitely because I was lucky enough to pay attention and hear Michael often with brother Randy as a section in live situations and just about on 80% of my record collection. Thanks to Michael I heard a “voice”. His voice. The tone, the solos, the feeling. I often wish it was my voice. I hear horn lines in my head with him playing them. That’s the impact he had/has on me. No copying, mimicking, just “him”. Great piece Bret. Thanks for keeping him alive.
Jazz is a high-order musical language that has developed by incorporating various other musical languages. Blues and classical techniques are fused in an ongoing exploration of sonic vocabularies. It is a complex, demanding musical discipline that requires time and effort. Jazz began as an American language because it arose from the experience of black Americans in the formation of our culture. Having survived slavery and all the rest of it, the African Americans developed identities unique in the world. These musicians have their roots in southern blues, gospel and church music. When combined with virtuoso classical techniques, The music that emerges is emotional, loose, given to hyperbole both dark and funny. The Blues is like the bottom layer of a pyramid: everything else is built on top of this idiom. Jazz maintains the cries of both pleasure and suffering that arrived on the guitar strings of early blues musicians. The singing voice has some gravel in it: slightly hoarse and redolent of something more ancient, something like voodoo magic. In jazz it is the Mysterious that beckons so powerfully. It is a musical world of spells and trances, of going ever farther “out” but never straying from its roots.
Jazz has spread across the world. Go anywhere: go to Japan. you’ll find jazz. Go to Europe, go to Thailand, go to California. Jazz is everywhere you go.
To go back to the original question: what is a jazz musician? It is a musician dedicated to long hours of practice and study. Jazz is difficult to master. It requires intellectual exertion and physical strength. At the heart of all this mighty effort is the thing that keeps jazz active: love. Ask anyone involved in jazz music and you’ll find this passionate heart beating with every breath. We love jazz as passionately as we love anything at all. We are a lot like priests of a universal religion.
I was just a child when I was first embraced by jazz. I was twelve and playing trumpet when I acquired two LPs. I had The Birth Of The Cool, by Miles Davis, and Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. Blakey’s drums are signature: chotta chotta boom boom, and the oceanic wash of his color cymbal as he holds the time in his limbs. What a band! Wayne Shorter, Lee Morgan, Jimmie Meritt, Wynton Kelly. Wow!
A musician who is devoted to jazz can expect a hard road. Jazz becomes commercially viable by way of dilution. The less “real” jazz is in it, the more money it makes. This requires wrenching choices in the lives of musicians.
Not everyone is Stan Getz. He got lucky and…he was white. He landed a hit tune, a bossa nova, and he made a ton of money. But Getz was a very fine jazz player. Getz played his jazz at all of his gigs, pausing only to render his hit Brazilian tune for the audience. One could say that “he sold out but gave all his profits to jazz.” No harm for Stan Getz: only respect.
The only thing easy about jazz is the word “play”. That’s what jazz is. A game to be played, a musical puzzle that needs resolution, figuring out how it works, why it works and when it works. Ask any jazz player how much fun it is to play with one’s peers. It is FUN! Nothing beats playing with others whose abilities are matched to one’s own. Or better, yet, playing with more advanced musicians in order to learn from mentors. Jazz is love, fun, blues, bossa, soulful, adventurous, mystical and profound.
Bret, I feel that this essay is special. It's more than the writing. It's the passion. I often wonder how we missed one another in the past. I think my addiction may have been a stumbling block. I would have enjoyed hanging with you. Brecker was a towering figure and if one must ask where Trane might have gone had he lived, Michael showed us one way to transfuse Coltrane into a new form.
i got to the end of this and thought, i need to breathe, then i realized my breath was racing, my heart was pounding. i hadn’t prepared for this, i didn’t know, this was coming, it was good, it was GREAT, but i couldn’t stay like this, i had to bring it back down, i started doing what i had learned, count my breaths, just be, with 1 and 2 and every time the mind took over go back, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, and slowly, slowly, i continued and then I came back, I was good, maybe not as GREAT as i, but good…… thanx Bret, thank you for taking me there, GREAT as always
If words alone could express and convey the essence of music, we wouldn’t need music. Well, you’ve come damn close. I saw the colors, heard the notes weaving and wailing. This writing, and your heart that guides it, is brilliant, like the stars that reflect our sun. Thank you so much.
I appreciate the passion in your writing about listening. But as for the title, fog is analog.
As a saxophonist, the link I think about between Coltrane and Brecker is practice. Lots and lots of practice.
And the difference in the link is what they practiced. Coltrane included musics of many cultures in his practice, compositions, and performances - spirituals, ragas, scales from Africa, Middle East, Asia, Europe, Eastern Europe, South America, etc. but I haven't seen that same wide scope in what I know of musical Brecker's disciplined diet.
Coltrane was on a path to transcend his lived experience through becoming a disciple of Ravi Shankar. Brecker's path did not cross into becoming a student of another master.
Perhaps I am ill informed. I am hungry to learn.
Oh, Bret! I read your words and heard my sister Lili-"when I sing, I want to sound like a saxophone." Her muse id Michael Brecker. I saw him every time he played in NY, particularly in his and Randy's club, "7th Avenue South." It was school for me, with Don Grolnick as his pianist (I play the piano) and the rest was church. On top of it all, he was the nicest person. I am certain Lili will write a post. Thank you, Bret. This article took me "there."
My sister Barbara has for two days now been after me “Did you read Bret’s post about Trane and Mike? You need to read it”. I read it at last. Brilliant depiction of Michael Brecker’s playing and describing that he was not copying or mimicking. If you have any kind of “ears” you “hear” it. So many times I saw him live and could remember snippets of his solo that pierced through me like an arrow and shattered me in pieces and when I was put together whole again, I was different; a whole better “me”. As a singer and musician and one highly influenced by jazz I don’t hear melodies or scat sing like most. What I hear in my head is the tenor saxophone. Maybe it’s cause my Mom played Coltrane records at home when I was a kid, but definitely because I was lucky enough to pay attention and hear Michael often with brother Randy as a section in live situations and just about on 80% of my record collection. Thanks to Michael I heard a “voice”. His voice. The tone, the solos, the feeling. I often wish it was my voice. I hear horn lines in my head with him playing them. That’s the impact he had/has on me. No copying, mimicking, just “him”. Great piece Bret. Thanks for keeping him alive.
What makes a jazz musician?
The first word that comes to mind is Commitment.
Jazz is a high-order musical language that has developed by incorporating various other musical languages. Blues and classical techniques are fused in an ongoing exploration of sonic vocabularies. It is a complex, demanding musical discipline that requires time and effort. Jazz began as an American language because it arose from the experience of black Americans in the formation of our culture. Having survived slavery and all the rest of it, the African Americans developed identities unique in the world. These musicians have their roots in southern blues, gospel and church music. When combined with virtuoso classical techniques, The music that emerges is emotional, loose, given to hyperbole both dark and funny. The Blues is like the bottom layer of a pyramid: everything else is built on top of this idiom. Jazz maintains the cries of both pleasure and suffering that arrived on the guitar strings of early blues musicians. The singing voice has some gravel in it: slightly hoarse and redolent of something more ancient, something like voodoo magic. In jazz it is the Mysterious that beckons so powerfully. It is a musical world of spells and trances, of going ever farther “out” but never straying from its roots.
Jazz has spread across the world. Go anywhere: go to Japan. you’ll find jazz. Go to Europe, go to Thailand, go to California. Jazz is everywhere you go.
To go back to the original question: what is a jazz musician? It is a musician dedicated to long hours of practice and study. Jazz is difficult to master. It requires intellectual exertion and physical strength. At the heart of all this mighty effort is the thing that keeps jazz active: love. Ask anyone involved in jazz music and you’ll find this passionate heart beating with every breath. We love jazz as passionately as we love anything at all. We are a lot like priests of a universal religion.
I was just a child when I was first embraced by jazz. I was twelve and playing trumpet when I acquired two LPs. I had The Birth Of The Cool, by Miles Davis, and Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. Blakey’s drums are signature: chotta chotta boom boom, and the oceanic wash of his color cymbal as he holds the time in his limbs. What a band! Wayne Shorter, Lee Morgan, Jimmie Meritt, Wynton Kelly. Wow!
A musician who is devoted to jazz can expect a hard road. Jazz becomes commercially viable by way of dilution. The less “real” jazz is in it, the more money it makes. This requires wrenching choices in the lives of musicians.
Not everyone is Stan Getz. He got lucky and…he was white. He landed a hit tune, a bossa nova, and he made a ton of money. But Getz was a very fine jazz player. Getz played his jazz at all of his gigs, pausing only to render his hit Brazilian tune for the audience. One could say that “he sold out but gave all his profits to jazz.” No harm for Stan Getz: only respect.
The only thing easy about jazz is the word “play”. That’s what jazz is. A game to be played, a musical puzzle that needs resolution, figuring out how it works, why it works and when it works. Ask any jazz player how much fun it is to play with one’s peers. It is FUN! Nothing beats playing with others whose abilities are matched to one’s own. Or better, yet, playing with more advanced musicians in order to learn from mentors. Jazz is love, fun, blues, bossa, soulful, adventurous, mystical and profound.
Bret, I feel that this essay is special. It's more than the writing. It's the passion. I often wonder how we missed one another in the past. I think my addiction may have been a stumbling block. I would have enjoyed hanging with you. Brecker was a towering figure and if one must ask where Trane might have gone had he lived, Michael showed us one way to transfuse Coltrane into a new form.
i got to the end of this and thought, i need to breathe, then i realized my breath was racing, my heart was pounding. i hadn’t prepared for this, i didn’t know, this was coming, it was good, it was GREAT, but i couldn’t stay like this, i had to bring it back down, i started doing what i had learned, count my breaths, just be, with 1 and 2 and every time the mind took over go back, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, and slowly, slowly, i continued and then I came back, I was good, maybe not as GREAT as i, but good…… thanx Bret, thank you for taking me there, GREAT as always
If words alone could express and convey the essence of music, we wouldn’t need music. Well, you’ve come damn close. I saw the colors, heard the notes weaving and wailing. This writing, and your heart that guides it, is brilliant, like the stars that reflect our sun. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Karla. So glad you enjoyed.
“after silence that which comes closest to expressing the inexpressible is music” sri chinmoy
Your kind words light the road forward. Thank you.