Jazz Articles about Michael Brecker

About Michael Brecker

Radio & Podcasts

Damien Erskine, Chris Potter, Steve Smith, Marl Lettieri, Michael Brecker

by Len Davis
December 7, 2025

This will be the final Bitches Brew Radio program of 2025. We'll return on January 9th, 2026 with a brand-new year of boundary-pushing music. This show is packed with fresh sounds and deep cuts, including new music from J-Rod Sullivan & the 4 Korners, guitarist Franky Freedom with Gary Willis, Dan Arcamone with Steve Pruitt, Wayne Krantz, Damien Erskine, Chris Potter, and Steve Smith featuring George Brooks and Mark Lettieri, keyboardist Santiago Bosch, drummer Gergo Borlai, Italian fusion outfit Electric ...

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Liner Notes

Grant Green: The Main Attraction

by Arnaldo DeSouteiro
October 30, 2025

During his brilliant career as one of the best producers in the music history, Creed Taylor (born in Lynchburg, Virginia, on May 13, 1929) has worked with some of world's greatest guitarists: from Barry Galbraith (1919-1983) and Mundell Lowe, who took part in the Creed Taylor Orchestra albums (Lonelyville, Shock!, Ping Pang Pong) for ABC-Paramount in the late Fifties, to smooth jazz virtuoso Steve Laury, who was signed to CTI in 1995. In between, Creed produced memorable albums ...

Play This!

Michael Brecker: Timeline

by Scott Lichtman
February 21, 2025

While the song “Timeline" is structured as a straightforward minor blues, it is nonetheless attention-grabbing and inspiring, for several reasons. First, Michael Brecker, Pat Metheny, Larry Goldings and Elvin Jones are the epitome of musicality, whether appreciated individually or as a unit. Then there is Metheny's composition: just when the listener becomes hooked on the catchy variations in the head, the band slides into a multi-bar, dotted-quarter, 11th chord progression in the chorus that lifts you out of 4/4 time ...

Liner Notes

Ron Carter: Anything Goes

by Arnaldo DeSouteiro
July 11, 2024

Ronald Levin Carter (born Ferndale, Michigan, on May 4, 1937) needs no introduction. Let's just say that he is the bassist's bassist. On Ron's hands, the bass and the man become the same entity, the same person. Played by Ron Carter, the acoustic bass sounds like... Ron Carter! That's why he is one of the three top bassists in the music history. However, if Ron needs no introduction, his Anything Goes album does. Recorded on June & July, ...

Liner Notes

Hal Galper Quintet: Live at the Berlin Philharmonic 1977

by Paul Rauch
February 19, 2023

Sullivan County, New York, is a long way from the grind of the jazz scene in New York City. For iconic pianist Hal Galper, it has been home for some forty five years. The area has long drawn artists attracted to its rural lifestyle, and quick access to the city. For Galper, his move represented a bit of a repose lifestyle-wise, after spending many years on the road and in the studio with the likes of Chet Baker, Cannonball Adderly ...

Liner Notes

Steve Khan: Arrows

by AAJ Staff
January 25, 2023

By Steve Khan With The Blue Man not selling as well as Tightrope, Dr. George Butler requested that I have a co-producer for the next CD. I was lucky to be able to land the engineering / production talents of my old and dear friend, Elliot Scheiner. Elliot and I had recorded together on countless sessions, but perhaps most people link us together because it was Elliot who recommended me to Donald Fagen and Walter Becker for AJA, which, of ...

Book Excerpts

Ode to a Tenor Titan

by Bill Milkowski
March 22, 2022

The following is an excerpt from Chapter 8, “Going Solo, The Pittbull and The EWI" from Bill Milkowski's Ode to a Tenor Titan: The Life and Times and Music of Michael Brecker (Backbeat Books, 2022). By early 1986, Michael began formulating plans for his long-overdue solo debut. He was 37, a universally respected figure and acknowledged 'monster' player admired by fellow musicians from the pop, rock and jazz worlds. He had ridden to fame through the '70s ...