Daily Dose Of Jazz..

Randal Edward Brecker was born November 27, 1945 in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania suburb of Cheltenham to a musical family. Choosing the trumpet over the clarinet at school when he was eight, it was an easy selection after hearing Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Clifford Brown and Chet Baker at home. He attended Cheltenham High School and then Indiana University from 1963 to 1966 studying with Bill Adam, David Baker and Jerry Coker. He later moved to New York and performed with Clark Terry’s Big Bad Band, the Duke Pearson and the The Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestras.

By 1967 Randy ventured into jazz-rock with the band Blood, Sweat & Tears, on their first album Child Is Father To The Man, but left to join the Horace Silver Quintet. He recorded his first solo album Score in 1968 and featured his brother Michael. Leaving Silver, he then joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers before teaming up with brother Michael, Barry Rogers, Billy Cobham and John Abercrombie to form the fusion group Dreams. They recorded two albums for Columbia Records before disbanding in 1971. In the early Seventies Randy performed live with The Eleventh House, Stevie Wonder and Billy Cobham and recorded several albums with his brother under pianist and composer Hal Galper.

By 1975, Randy and Michael formed the Brecker Brothers band, releasing six albums for Arista and garnered seven Grammy nominations between 1975 and 1981. After the Brecker Brothers disbanded in 1982, he recorded and toured as a member of Jaco Pastorius’ Word of Mouth big band. It was soon thereafter that he met and later married Brazilian jazz pianist Eliane Elias, formed their own band, toured the world several times and recorded one album named after their daughter together, Amanda on Passport Records.

The 1990s would see Randy and Michael reunited for a world tour and a triple-Grammy nomination for the GRP recording The Return of the Brecker Brothers. Their 1994 follow-up album Out of the Loop won two Grammy Awards and he went on to record an album with  Polish composer Włodek Pawlik. His first Grammy as a solo artists came from his project Into the Sun and this was followed by a series of recordings over the next decade and winning his third Grammy for Best Contemporary Jazz Album with 34th N Lex. He toured Europe, performed and recorded live and won a fourth Grammy with the WDR Big Band, and released a two CD set of live recordings with the Randy Brecker Band featuring Dave Kikoski, Victor Bailey, Steve Smith, Rodney Holmes and Hiram Bullock. He would go on to win a fifth Grammy with his album Randy in Brazil, and a sixth with Night in Calisia, a collaboration between Brecker, the Wlodek Pawlik Trio, the Kalisz Philharmonic Orchestra and Adam Klocek

Throughout the years he has performed and recorded with David Sanborn, Mike Stern, Bill Lee, Dave Weckl, Ada Rovatti, Stanley Turrentine, Billy Cobham, Larry Coryell, Bruce Springsteen, Lou Reed, Sandip Burman, Charles Mingus, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Horace Silver, Frank Zappa, Parliament-Funkadelic, Chris Parker, Dire Straits, Todd Rundgren, Blue Öyster Cult, Richard Barone, Spyro Gyra, Barbara Dennerlein Aerosmith Arkadia Jazz All Stars, Patti Austin, Gato Barbieri, George Benson, Carla Bley, Ron Carter, Robin Eubanks, Johnny Hodges, Jaroslav Jakubovič, Hubert Laws, Yusef Lateef, Arif Mardin, Brother Jack McDuff, Alphonse Mouzon, Idris Muhammad, Duke Pearson, Don Sebesky, Stanley Turrentine, Miroslav Vitous, Roseanna Vitro, Kenny Werner, Jack Wilkins, Charles Williams among others.

Trumpeter and flugelhornist Randy Brecker continues to compose, record, perform and tour.

Put A Dose In Your Pocket

More Posts: flugelhorn,trumpet