Michael Brecker - Pilgrimage
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Free Music Notes for Pilgrimage
Free Music Review: transcendent
Hit: 5 Stars
Amazing CD, transcendent in every sense of the word. Michael Brecker will be greatly missed.Free Music Review: Tragic Loss
Hit: 5 Stars
This is a fitting tribute to a great artist. As someone else said, "It softens the blow".Free Music Review: A true "must have".
Hit: 5 Stars
If you are a fan of Michael and "the gang", then you must get this CD.Free Music Review: The Cost Of Living
Hit: 4 Stars
The reason this album makes me cry has nothing to do with the tunes. Under the circumstances (Michael Brecker, d. 1/13/07, age 57; this music made in August '06 while waiting for a matching bone marrow donor) you might expect every reverent reviewer to be giving out 5 stars for Pilgrimage. I'm just trying to be real, musically speaking, looking at all of Brecker's output. And 4 stars is still outstanding, right? Call it 4 and a half through the tears.
What *is* perfect about this music is the way it dovetails with Brecker's solo debut Michael Brecker on Impulse! from exactly 20 years ago. Three of the same five musicians from that amazing album are here. Would have been 4 out of 5 if Herbie Hancock had sat in the chair put there for him in 1987. Instead, the more than comparable Kenny Kirkland filled in. Can't you just hear Kenny and Mike "re-uniting" right about now? Brecker's EWI makes a nice return, delivering some newer subtler sounds, not necessarily reminding you of how you left your jaw on the floor in June 1987. John Patitucci takes on the Charlie Haden role and excels, as he did previously with Mike on 2003's Wide Angles and the previous year's Directions in Music: Live at Massey Hall. Brad Mehldau gets robust pretty much whenever he wants to, and he does so here on just over half the tracks. Hancock hand-delivers his signature calling cards on the others. Metheny blows straightahead, sometimes on changes that he's just making up, and it all sounds great. On a few tracks he uses that same guitar synth patch that he hasn't changed much for nearly 25 years now - doesn't matter - still sounds good. Jack is Jack. Solid. On the stand-out track "Tumbleweed" there's this bit of wordless vocal that goes uncredited in the liners. It sounds a bit like Manolo Badrena, but don't be surprised if it's Jack in disguise. The co-producer's role (handled by the late Don Grolnick in 1987) is adopted here by the very capable Gil Goldstein, who has quite a veteraned track record of his own. Though all of the tunes here were submitted by Brecker expressly for this project, it is not hard to imagine the amount of time that Gil and Mike must have spent together about a year ago just to work them up - time that must now seem precious, bittersweet and bravely resonant.
The jamming all over Pilgrimage is formidable, even heavy, but the heads and the bass lines aren't quite as memorable or as incisive as they were on that '87 batch of songs like "Nothing Personal" or "Choices" or "Syzygy". Then again, strength (no signs of ill health anywhere) and chops are on display everywhere here, much like they were on "Original Rays" from the debut. Perhaps this stack of tunes will grow on me in a couple of months the way the ones from `87 did in a couple of days, to the point where you just can't get them out of your noggin either. I'm looking forward to that. Right now I just want to be sad.
A lot of people do these reviews for ego reasons - probably I'm one of them. But maybe we could take it easy on some of the others (or me) here. This is no time for intolerance of human imperfections. I'm not going to question the motives of anyone who wants to write about this, Michael Brecker's final release. Mike wouldn't have. Why would he - playing and writing were his whole life.
Free Music Review: Great playing under any circumstances, but all the more so under these.
Hit: 4 Stars
If there's any solace to be gained from the dramatic, heart-rending final months of Michael Brecker's life, it's that perhaps some of the attention bestowed upon this great musician and exemplary human being will be directed to the vital African-American art form that he influenced and contributed to. As recently as 1990, the average life-span of jazz musicians was estimated to be 43, with the cases of saxophone legends Charlie Parker (who died at the age of 34) and John Coltrane (40) more often held up as typical rather than exceptional. It's difficult to recall the case of a jazz musician's premature death (Brecker was 57) that has provoked the outpourings of sympathy, love and respect, along with the unrestrained critical and popular assessments of his music, that this one has. But Brecker was a special case. His courageous battle was played out in full for almost two years (and for good reason because of the urgent search for a matching bone marrow donor for his exceedingly rare cancer). During this time, a larger public became aware of not only an outrageously talented, present-day master of the archetypal jazz instrument, the tenor saxophone, but of a generous and gentle human being--unassuming, personable, a loving father and family man. Finally, his death was neither a sudden shock (the road has taken a severe toll on musicians) nor one that could be implicitly interpreted as "self-inflicted" (drug addiction, alcoholism, smoking, etc.). Then the capper: a recording session that, accurately or not, is being viewed as not simply the "last note" but as a planned valedictory, a final testament, a visionary requiem. Its posthumous release, then, cannot help but take on a significance beyond the commercial, the aesthetic, and the historical: it's become a spiritual journey--from conception, to execution, and finally to its reception as a kind of other-worldly message from Brecker himself. (I can almost see the modest Michael bemused, perhaps even a bit amused, by much of the fanfare and fuss.)
As I'm listening to the music now, it's clearly apparent that he's playing like a giant in full possession of all his considerable powers (much as was pianist Bill Evans on the sixteen CDs' worth of music recorded less than a week before his death). The ensemble playing on "The Mean Time" is rhythmically and melodically intricate, tightly executed yet replete with inspired interplay and freeness. And for all the energy being expended, the musicians are listening to each other, working with dynamics and tension-release techniques over modal scales and within textures that are polyphonic, bringing as much attention to the group as to the individual soloist. "Tumbleweed" is another example of a high-intensity, intricate and polyphonically rich piece. On this composition Metheny's synthesizer-processed guitar solo might seem risky (should it ever come to be seen as dated, period-piece gadgetry) because it precedes a majestic Brecker solo, which sets up a two-handed, almost equally exhilarating turn by Brad Mehldau on acoustic piano.
It's an impressive session by exceptional players who are on their game. Is it a "work of art"? Is it a "classic"? Is it the "best" jazz album of the new millennium? Of Brecker's career? Maybe we'll know--in time. For now, best to enjoy it. Brecker's assimilation of Coltrane's innovations was not unlike Sonny Stitt's translation of Parker's new language. And there's always room for yet another flawless Stitt session.