Randy Brecker

Brecker's new MCA\lmpulse! Records album,Toe to Toe, was co-produced by Brecker and pianist Jim Beard. It is special to the leader, he explains, for several reasons.

"Aside from the fact that I haven't done an electric record since a 1982 album with my wife (Brazilian pianist Eliane Elias), I'm also singing on two tunes that I wrote - - It Creeps Up On Ya which is an anti-drug song, and What Is The Answer, which is about the down and out." Brecker was inspired to write the latter song, he notes, after living in a loft overlooking New York City's the Bowery.

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Randy Brecker's history is as varied as it is distinguished. His father was a semiprofessional pianist and jazz fanatic "...who really loved trumpet players. My earliest recollections are of (trumpeters) Clifford Brown, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis, and Chet Baker," recalls Randy. "Theirs were the first records that I listened to, and when I was eight or nine, I would take the albums up to my room and just try to play along - - particularly with the more lyrical players, like Miles and Chet. They were major influences."

Randy's elementary school music department offered only trumpet or clarinet lessons. "I just gravitated to the trumpet," he allows, "and I studied with a guy from the Philadelphia Orchestra for six years. But my main teacher in Philly was a guy named Tony Marchione, a classically trained trumpet player who also had a great feeling for jazz."

After finishing high school, Randy attended Indiana University. He never graduated, however; fate intervened. "I was supposed to graduate, but Indiana University had an excellent big band. We had won a collegiate jazz festival at Notre Dame and were picked to go on a U.S. State Department tour of the Near East and Asia. After that, I just stayed in Europe for three or four months."

Randy then moved to New York City, where he began getting calls to perform as a professional. "In the mid to late '60s, there were a lot of bands around town," Randy recalls. Chuck Israel had a group, Duke Pearson had a great big band, so did Joe Henderson, and of course there was the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis group. I started working in a lot of them - Clark Terry's for one. Clark had been a judge for the festival at Notre Dame, so when he formed a big band in 1967, he was kind enough to ask me to join."

Around that time, Randy began his foray into jazz-rock by helping to form Blood, Sweat and Tears. He worked with the band for a year, and played on their innovative 1968 debut album Child is Father to the Man.

He then joined the Horace Silver Quintet. I quit B,S & T right before (their single) Spinning Wheel, which sold about nine million copies. And they'd come down and taunt me when I was playing with Horace in a small club and they'd just played in front of fifty thousand people. I had a lot of fun with Horace, though, and it was all worth it."

Also, in 1968, Brecker recorded his first album as a leader, Score, for the United Artists Records Jazz subsidiary, Solid State. About two years later, Randy worked with Blakey's Jazz Messengers.

Then came the first of two bands he could co-lead with his saxophonist brother, Michael, Dreams. "This group was basically a jazz/rock group, with emphasis on jazz. We tried to keep it as spontaneous as possible. We used the horns the way Charles Mingus did, with sketches of arrangements and a lot of collective improvisation."

In the two years it existed, Dreams turned out two albums for Columbia Records, Dreams and Imagine My Surprise. We gained a healthy underground reputation," Brecker allows, "but the band was never a big commercial success."

Around 1974, the Brecker brothers were hired by drummer Billy Cobham, with whom they recorded several albums. It was during the period that Randy and Michael decided to pursue their own career. We were asked by Arista Records to do our album, The Brecker Brothers, which featured material that I had been writing," remembers Randy. "I produced the entire album, which was nominated for four Grammys." Between 1975 and 1981, the Brecker Brothers recorded six albums and garnered seven Grammy nominations.

"In late '81, we decided to pack it in," says Randy. We had been playing together for ten years. Mike joined the group Steps Ahead, and I joined (bassist) Jaco Pastorius. Jaco's band toured the U.S. and recorded a live album in Japan, which was released as Word of Mouth on Warner Brothers. I stayed with Jaco until 1982, when I met my wife, and we decided to form a group. Eliane and I recorded one album, Amanda, for Passport Records."

Randy and Eliane toured the world several times, and worked together until 1986, when Randy cut his first acoustic jazz album, In the Idiom, for Denon Records. Produced and arranged by Randy, the album featured saxophonist Joe Henderson, bassist Ron Carter, drummer Al Foster and a young pianist named Dave Kikosky.

In late 1986, Brecker assembled a group including Kikosky, Bob Berg on tenor saxophone, Joey Baron on drums and Dieter Ilg on bass. They toured Europe several times, including a State Department tour of Eastern Europe, and cut an album's worth of material at the celebrated New York venue Sweet Basil.

Randy has continued to work with the group, which has undergone one personnel change - - Dennis Chambers has joined on drums. The group has toured North America and Europe several times.

Randy has also played with Stanley Clarke's Jazz Explosion Super Band, and has been honored for three years straight as "Most Valuable Trumpet Player" by the New York Chapter of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.

In addition to the Live at Sweet Basil album, Randy says to look forward to an album of his music interpreted by Brazilian musicians and recorded in that country.

A new album with Michael Brecker -- who also currently records for MCA's\Impulse! jazz subsidiary - - is also a definite possibility. "It's being discussed," reveals Randy. "We may also do some touring, time permitting. If we do play together, we'll keep our solo careers. But we'll still call ourselves the Brecker Brothers."