Michael Brecker, the jazz saxophonist who won 11 Grammy Awards and was considered by many the most influential tenor player of his generation, died Saturday at a hospital in New York City. He was 57.
The cause of death, according to his manager, Darryl Pitt, was leukemia, the result of Brecker's struggle with myelodysplastic syndrome, a form of cancer in which the bone marrow produces abnormal as well as normal blood cells.
Influenced by John Coltrane and Wayne Shorter, Brecker transformed what he had learned from the two jazz icons, added his fascination with the timbres of rock music (and rock guitar), and enhanced it with that most intimate of jazz elements, a unique, immediately recognizable sound. The combination was pure magic for young players eager to approach jazz from a perspective reflecting their time and their generation.
Over the last two decades, Brecker's playing has had a powerful impact on such established artists as Chris Potter and Bob Mintzer, as well as a growing wave of emerging players. Like many jazz artists, Brecker was an active studio musician. But the scale of his appearances as a sideman was remarkable -- more than 900 recordings with artists ranging from Frank Sinatra, James Brown and Simon & Garfunkel to Frank Zappa, Laura Nyro and Funkadelic.
His warm-toned, lyrical solo on James Taylor's "Don't Let Me Be Lonely Tonight" in 1972 was a breakthrough performance, introducing him to legions of fans unfamiliar with his early work with his brother, trumpeter Randy Brecker, in the jazz-rock fusion band, Dream. (Brecker subsequently rerecorded "Don't Let Me Be Lonely Tonight" -- again featuring Taylor's vocal in a drastically re-imagined version of the tune -- on his double Grammy Award-winning 2001 CD "The Ballad Book.")
A-list studio gigs may have paid the rent, but Brecker was always solidly in touch with jazz. In the early '70s, he played hard bop with pianist Horace Silver and fusion with drummer Billy Cobham. The Brecker Brothers Band, formed with his brother in 1975, was a fusion pathfinder, searching out -- and frequently finding -- common ground among Jimi Hendrix, Thelonious Monk and Sly Stone.
Remarkably, however, it wasn't until 1987 that Brecker -- at the age of 38 -- finally released his first album under his own name. The appropriately titled "Michael Brecker" won jazz album of the year awards in Down Beat and Jazziz magazines.
