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Randy Brecker (left)
with the Brecker
Brothers Band
Michael Weintrob
Caught
Brecker Band Reunion
Awes Blue Note
Five tunes into the Brecker Brothers Band
Reunion’s first Wednesday set before a
packed house—which included Michael
Brecker’s widow and children—at the Blue
Note, Randy Brecker introduced the band.
“I know you’ve never heard of any of them,”
Brecker joked. “They want to be introduced—they
have vast insecurity problems.”
The evening’s sonic evidence belied the
notion that guitarist Mike Stern, keyboardist
George Whitty, bassist Will Lee or drummer
Dave Weckl—each a BBB alumnus—or
Brecker’s spouse, saxophonist Ada Rovatti,
doubted their respective abilities to convey
a message in notes and tones. The all-star
cohort functioned as egoless team players
with nothing more to prove than their ability
to differentiate from the repertoire that they
had done the night before.
With one rehearsal day and one bandstand
hit behind them, they navigated
famously difficult Brecker Brothers charts—
chock-a-block with harmonic intervals of
what one band member called “slide rule”
complexity, shifting beats and declarative
melodies—with panache, crisp ferocity and
abiding bonhomie, auguring well for a forthcoming
live-DVD/studio-CD package to be
generated at week’s end.
The 65-year-old trumpeter launched
into an as-yet untitled number (“the first
tune of the set is called ‘The First Tune
Of The Set,’” Brecker announced)—a hithard-from-the-jump
vamp reminiscent of
“Freedom Jazz Dance.” He moved into a
passage during which Brecker and Rovatti
paired off against Stern and Whitty in an
exchange of breathe-as-one unison riffs,
evolving into solo dialogue between each
set of protagonists. Propelled by the lockedin
rhythm section, Brecker and Rovatti traded
off five or six passages of delimited timelengths.
Brecker uncorked succinct, logical
statements, illuminating a melodic throughline
with golden tone across the trumpet’s
registral range; Rovatti riposted with
dense, turbulent declamations. Stern and
Whitty dialogued similarly, Weckl used all
his limbs for a “how-did-he-do-that” solo
and Whitty delivered a few cool, simmering
choruses that unfolded within the spaces
before a closing vamp restatement.
Stern set up a medium-slow swampfunk
“thang” with a Meters feel, also untitled.
Whitty channeled Professor Longhair,
then a slick Brecker-Rovatti unison catapulted
Brecker into solo flight. Stern and Whitty
comped with long, smeary sounds, setting
up a phantasmagoric Stern-Rovatti dialogue.
The guitarist projected characteristic
caffeinated energy and sharp intellect as
Rovatti swung hard and deployed some sort
of modulated, sculpted, wild shapes.
During the subsequent Brazil-tinged
song, Brecker ascended through the changes
with luminous tone, followed by Weckl’s
force-of-nature solo. He re-tweaked his
younger brother’s “Strap-Hanging,” introducing
the theme with a mock fanfare.
Rovatti channeled her late brother-in-law’s
essence with a beautifully constructed statement
built on compression-release motifs
that set a template for master-class solos by
Brecker and Stern.
The set ended with the Brecker Brothers
staple “Skunk Funk” played, as Brecker put
it, “as fast as humanly possible.” Late Show
With David Letterman bassist Will Lee
belied his age with agile leaps and groove
lockdowns. Rovatti declaimed eloquently
with gritty tone, while her husband had the
last word.
—Ted Panken
DECEMBER 2011 DOWNBEAT 15