Goddamn it.
To say Michael Brecker was a tenor saxophonist is an understatement.
He made his mark in the Seventies in the short-lived group, Dreams, and finally the fusion-influenced Brecker Brothers Band with his older brother Randy, a trumpeter.
From Wiki:
His more notable collaborations include those with James Taylor, Steely Dan, Donald Fagen and Joni Mitchell. During the early 80s he was also a member of NBC’s Saturday Night Live band. Brecker can be seen in the background sporting shades during Eddie Murphy’s James Brown parody, Get In The Hot Tub.
[…]Michael Brecker had been diagnosed with the blood disorder myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS). Despite a widely-publicized worldwide search, Brecker was unable to find a matching stem cell donor. In late 2005, he was the recipient of an experimental partial matching stem cell transplant.
But it didn’t take.
He died of MDS on Saturday in New York.
And Alice.
Undervalued by some critics because she was Trane’s widow. Undervalued because she put her religion in her music.
What do they think gospel is all about?
Or, doesn’t black expression also encompass other forms of sacred music?
Following a 25-year hiatus from major public performances, she returned to the stage for three US appearances in the fall of 2006, culminating with an ecstatic concert in San Francisco on November 4th with her son Ravi, drummer Roy Haynes and bassist Charlie Haden.
Alice Coltrane died of respiratory failure at West Hills Hospital and Medical Center in suburban Los Angeles. Reportedly she had been in frail health for some time prior to her death.
She must’ve known that she was going. So she did that last concert like her last prayer to the Universe.
If anything, the recording is what counts.
A love supreme.
Rest in peace, Michael and Alice.
I’d be honored if you’d cross-post this at ProgressiveHistorians.
at San Jose State, when I worked at an independent record store about a block from campus. Their first album kicked serious behind.
Brecker’s obit at this morning’s L.A. Times:
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-brecker15jan15,1,5467424.story?coll=la-hea
dlines-pe-california
Alice’s Sunday obit at LAT:
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-coltrane14jan14,1,1300733.story?coll=la-he
adlines-pe-california
The last I read of Alice Coltrane was this October ’06 article in the Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/20/AR2006102001761.html
which mentions nothing about any illness, so I’m quite shocked to learn of her death.
One phenomenal woman.
Probably published around the time she was about to do her final concert in the fall on the West Coast.
A lot of these wonderful people keep playing, keep writing, until almost to the very end.
Along withhis brother Randy and literally hundreds of others, we came up together in New York.
Honest musicians.
People like Mike.
People who thought, lived and breathed music. People who dreamed that they could equal Charlie Parker, John Coltane, Gil Evans, Charles Mingus…
He worked his ASS off.
He had real talent.
AND…he chanced into a good posiiton, and used it brilliantly.
Martin Luther King once said “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
Sometimes it’s hard to see the justice part.
But it’s in there.
It’s in there…
AG