E-MU Interview

Michael Brecker has played with top names in music such as Dave Brubeck, Chick Corea, Charles Mingus, John Lennon, Frank Sinatra, and Steely Dan. A jazz pioneer himself, Brecker was a founding member of Dreams, one of the first bands in the late 1960's to fuse a horn section and rock. He has become a new E4 user, so E-MU took this opportunity to find out what this monster tenor player has been up to.  

E-MU: Can you give us an update on your career? What have you been working on?
MB: Well, I just finished a brand-new CD. It's called "Nearness of You/The Ballad Book." It's a CD comprised completely of ballads. I had a great time recording it. Herbie Hancock plays piano, Pat Metheny plays guitar, Jack DeJohnette plays drums, Charlie Haden plays bass, and James Taylor sings on a couple of songs. We had a ball making the record. It should come out in June. It's on the Verve label.
E-MU: Is that a solo album?
MB: It's a solo album.
E-MU: I guess you've been touring, too? You just got back?
MB: I'm touring quite a bit. I just returned from a tour of South America and Mexico with my band.
E-MU: How'd you break into gigging with big names like Horace Silver?
MB: Well, I grew up playing jazz and R&B in Philadelphia. When I first moved to New York, my brother Randy was already playing trumpet with Horace. My brother and I first formed a group called Dreams. We were recording for Columbia Records when I was 19. When that band broke up, I decided to audition for Horace since he had an opening, a saxophone chair, so I auditioned and I got the gig. For me, it was very important because it was my first real jazz gig. He was a great band leader and teacher. I stayed with him for about a year-and-a-half and we did a lot of touring. I learned a lot from Horace, a lot of important tips about presentation and music.
E-MU: Can you share a couple of those tips?
MB: Well, they have to do with musical sensibility in regards to soloing, improvising, and creating tension and release in soloing, and at the same time doing it in a predetermined kind of space. He instructed me on how to play shorter solos and be able to get the same message across. And that was, for me, very helpful. Aside from other things concerning rhythm and swinging and things that are a little difficult to explain in non-musical terms.
E-MU: Did you play funk before playing with Horace?
MB: Having grown up in Philadelphia, which was kind of a rock and roll, R&B town, I was exposed to blues and R&B, as well as to jazz. My father was a jazz musician, a jazz pianist -- semi-professional, he was also an attorney. In reverse order, really, he was an attorney first, but he had a real passion for jazz and he played great piano, so he took my brother and I to many, many concerts in the Philadelphia area. So by the time I was 12 years old, I had already heard Miles Davis' band, Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Woody Herman, Cannonball Adderley, Jimmy Smith, Thelonious Monk -- on and on, that's what we did. It was, for me, a lot of fun, a great way to grow up.
E-MU: You're the most recorded saxophonist since 1975?
MB: Well, where'd that come from? You must've gone on the internet.
E-MU: You have a lot of fans spreading rumors?
MB: I don't know. I did a lot of recording in the '70s through the mid-'80's. I also did quite a bit of studio work.
E-MU: What do you like more, live performance or studio work?
MB: I like both, depending. You can't really compare because it really depends. When you're playing live, it depends on so many things -- same thing in the studio. It depends on the project, what's going on in the studio. But both are tremendously fulfilling. I would probably have to say that all in all, I prefer to play live.
E-MU: Where do you see your music style going?
MB: I'm going to go ahead like two blocks, and then make a left. And then try to stay in the middle lane, but occasionally kind of speed up and go in the left lane. No, really, I like to keep it fresh. I'm always intrigued by doing things that are new for me. Not necessarily new to music, but things that I haven't done. It keeps it challenging for me, so each project that I take on is usually something that I haven't done before. For instance, make a ballad record. On the record before, I recorded an album with organ with a gentleman named Larry Goldings, who's one of my favorite musicians and someone with whom I'd been wanting to record. The next album is probably going to lean towards the African...kind of an African slant.
E-MU: You mean the rhythms or the instrumentation?
MB: The rhythms and the harmony. But kind of juxtaposed with the way I like to improvise. It's hard to explain. But I can hear it in my head. I wish I could plug you into my head.
E-MU: You're such a versatile musician. You've played with people from Chet Baker to Jaco and Zappa. How do you approach such a wide variety of styles?
MB: Well, it's not as difficult as you would expect. I grew up listening to a lot of different kinds of music and played, as you said, in many different genres. Being a horn player, it's not that difficult (for me at least it hasn't been) to switch gears because a lot of the same musical fundamentals hold true or remain true in any context that I'm playing in. And it's just being kind of familiar with and liking the style that I'm playing in. But they're all connected as well. Jazz is not that different from R&B -- they're all connected in a lot of ways, at least in Western music. So it's not that much of a stretch.
E-MU: You're a major influence on younger tenor players. What do you think of your role in transforming jazz?
MB: Well, I would say that I don't really think about that. I've never really been concerned with that. When I'm approached by young players for tips or for lessons or for pointers, I tell them to listen to the people that I listened to because that's really where my playing came from -- musicians such as John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Joe Henderson, and on and on, the list is huge. But those guys are the guys I listened to and continue to listen to. Most of my vocabulary has come from them.
E-MU: I see a resurgence of funk as a jazz style with newcomers like Charlie Hunter and Medeski Martin & Wood. Do you have any comments on that?
MB: I've always been interested in funk from any angle. I've played in many different funk-related formats, for lack of a better word. The music is constantly cycling and the whole thing is cyclical. We can keep revisiting all of these things in fresh ways because there's a lot of room for growth.
E-MU: Do you think it brings more listeners to jazz?
MB: I hope so.
E-MU: On a totally different subject, what do you think about MP3 sharing technology? Do you care if your music's up on Napster?
MB: I'm split right down the middle because I do care if it appears, which it does. On the other hand, I love getting stuff for free (laughs). The musicians and the artists have to be protected, and they're working it out now in a way that everyone can benefit. We work very hard, spend years on our music and our art, so we do want to be protected from being completely ripped off. But it is a dilemma because obviously the internet technology is not going to go away. And there are many positive things from places like Napster. It's a great way for people to hear music that previous to that had no access to it. It's fantastic to have access to such a huge library of stuff. So there are a lot of good things. Hopefully, there'll be some kind of resolution where everyone can be okay with it. We'll see what happens.

I can't download MP3s because it takes too long. I unfortunately can only get 56k where I live -- no cable or DSL. I've downloaded maybe two MP3s -- I have no patience. We're really still in the early stages of the internet. We're going to be seeing phenomenal speed increases in the not so distant future.
E-MU: How do you plan to use your E4?
MB: I'm planning to use it with an instrument that I play called an EWI, which is an Electronic Wind Instrument, kind of a wind-driven synthesizer. I've been playing it for many years and have recently taken kind of a break from it for awhile because I got tired of lugging equipment. I was hoping to shrink the racks down to a PowerBook and the E4.
E-MU: What kind of music are you going to do with that? What kind of sound? Fusion?
MB: No, not fusion. That's kind of a misleading term. But it would be probably acoustically oriented, improvised, open music -- on the acoustic side, but with the EWI as well. That's a really terrible explanation. But I'm not interested in playing loud music right now. I've been more interested in improvising and having musical conversations with my fellow musicians on stage in an intimate way. That really excites me. The EWI is a very effective tool; it's a very expressive solo instrument. It's capable of providing a lot of different colors and shapes. It pretty much can do anything and I'm just looking for a way to shrink it down. So that's why I'm playing the E4.