With hundreds of albums to his credit, side gigs backing artists from Art Blakey to Yoko Ono, a fistful of Grammy awards and a vocabulary that ranges from hard bop to easy funk, trumpeter Randy Brecker has certainly earned the right to coast a bit.
But the fusion pioneer won’t hear of it. At 66, he’s still playing hard, practicing daily and tackling new challenges.
“The trumpet is a challenging instrument,” says Brecker, who performs with a reunited version of the seminal Brecker Brothers Band in an SFJAZZ event Sept. 28 at Herbst Theater. “There’s always new ground to cover…Music is a bottomless pit.”
Raised in Philadelphia, Brecker may well be one of the last of the pre-conservatory era of jazz greats. While he had his share of formal schooling, Brecker got most of his education in the studio and on the bandstand, working both with jazz artists and within Philly’s vital R&B scene.
Brecker quickly developed not only a sense of professionalism but a musical curiosity that led him in myriad directions. Serious jazz? That’s him backing Charles Mingus on the bassist/composer’s last album, “Me Myself an Eye,” and spurring iconic pianist Horace Silver through much of the 1970s. Rock? Landmarks ranging from the horn charts on Bruce Springsteen’s seminal “Born to Run” to the studio sheen of Steely Dan’s “Gaucho” bear Brecker’s thumbprint. R&B? Can’t get much more serious than the Parliament-Funkadelic mothership.
“It’s taken years for me to be accepted in all these genres,” Brecker says. “I make sure I play a little of this and a little of that year-to-year. Things come up and I want to challenge myself.
“But I don’t do weddings,” he says with a laugh.
As a front-of-the-stage player, Brecker is most associated with the heyday of the jazz-rock fusion movement. Besides long and fruitful collaborations with artists such as Jaco Pastorious and Frank Zappa, Brecker and his saxophonist brother, Michael, helped chart a middle ground between R&B and jazz with the Brecker Brothers Band.
The band scored several Top 40 hits with era-defining tunes such as “Some Skunk Funk” and “East River” and helped launch the careers of artists such as David Sanborn and Mike Stern.
The band had a sensational run through the 1970s and early 1980s before the members went on to other projects, punctuated by periodic BBB reunions. The current tour, however, is the first time the name has been resurrected since Michael died (from complications of leukemia) in 2007.
Brecker says many of the key members of the band came together for a series of dates at the Blue Note last year. The audience response was so fervent, and enough time had passed since Michael’s death, that the idea of an extended reunion felt right.
“It took a while,” Brecker says. “We missed him a lot. At this time, it really brings forth some pleasant old memories to work together and play these songs.” (Brecker still keeps it in the family, too -- his wife, Ada Rovatti, plays sax for the group.)
And it turns out that Michael is still pushing the band forward. Shortly before the tour, the group’s manager found a long-forgotten box of Michael’s sheet music, including some overlooked gems
“We’re doing some of his tunes every night that have never been recorded or really heard in public,” Brecker says. “We want to keep it a living, breathing organism.”
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