The Brecker Brothers

During the 1970s Michael and Randy Brecker jointly directed an ensemble of leading New York session players that at one point or another featured David Sanborn, Don Grolnick, Will Lee, and George Duke. On occasions when the Brecker Brothers Band decided to stretch out, they stood among the most perceptive and inventive outfits working in fusion. Randy, the group’s chief composer and trumpeter, wrote standout pieces whose forms shifted unpredictably, whose melodies twisted in elaborate patterns, and whose harmonies grew densely layered; these inside/out bop heads were delivered with faultless accuracy above funk grooves. In contrast to most jazz-funk of the era, the Breckers—at least on their initial album—largely avoided overt concessions to the marketplace. Although 1975’s Back to Back enjoyed a measure of commercial traction, it also succeeded on artistic terms. The Brothers’ recordings fused extended pop frameworks, first-rate jazz improvisation, and refined compositional procedures. On later projects the urge to reach wider audiences evidently grew harder to resist. Even so, nearly every release contained passages of genuine substance. In the early 1990s RCA assembled two compilation CDs that gathered the strongest of the band’s instrumental, jazz-centered work. The brothers discontinued regular collaboration after 1982, yet they reconvened from time to time for tours and to record two albums for GRP: Return of the Brecker Brothers in 1992 and Out of the Loop in 1994.