Michael Brecker Performance Videos

The late great Michael Brecker can be seen in all his splendor on YouTube. Dedicated fans have posted some spectacular performances and interviews, as well as comments honoring the most influential saxophonist of the last 25 years. Here is one clip from the Newport Jazz Festival in the late 80s that features Brecker on both the EWI and the tenor, as well as a mind-blowing performance by Mike Stern on guitar.

The Bad Plus - 1/28/07 at The Village Vanguard

The Bad Plus ended a week-long run at The Village Vanguard last Sunday with a dynamic performance that featured material from both Suspicious Activity and their forthcoming album this spring. Pianist Ethan Iverson sat with his back to the audience and milked the Vanguard’s Steinway for all it was worth. Reid Anderson faced the room with his upright bass, and David King set up shop behind his barebones set, complete with a hodge-podge bag of pots, pans, children’s toys and anything else he felt like pulling out.

The madness began even before the Plus took the stage. At about 8:30, half an hour before the first set was to begin, a strong gaseous odor overwhelmed the basement venue and the Vanguard was quickly evacuated. As we made our way onto 7th Avenue South, fire trucks were already pulling up and hoses being unfurled. Thick smoke was pouring out of a laser hair removal salon above the Vanguard. It was snowing. The Bad Plus themselves stood on the sidewalk with the rest of us, taking in the absurd scene. In twenty minutes we filed back in and the music began.

The Plus opened with the playful “Let Our Garden Grow” off of Suspicious Activity. Anderson and Iverson were in perfect synchrony through the head, and King delighted the crowd with his repeated use of a tingling children’s toy, pressed firmly against his floor tom and rotated about its surface.

Most of the material in the first set seemed to be either part of their next album or otherwise unheard. Between tunes, as Iverson manned the mic to introduce the trio, King and Anderson played over the intermittent applause with delightful mini-grooves that lasted for only a few seconds until the applause ended.

These guys were really working the room. They were relaxed, confident and playful, yet managed to turn the atmosphere upside-down with a special tune entitled “Giant” dedicated to the late great Michael Brecker. It was a quiet, thoughtful piece that received enthusiastic praise from the onlookers.

The Plus concluded their set with a tune called "Physical Cities". Besides the usual tightness and improvisational breaks that make their material so new and amorphous, "Physical Cities" contained a passage, perhaps two minutes in length, where all three, in stop-time, played dramatic hits in unison. I’ve never heard a moment like this in any of their recordings—not even in the Live in Tokyo album. Anderson, Iverson and King seemed cerebrally connected—the length of the section and the complexity both in number and timing of the hits made it seem as if this was going beyond rehearsed material: these are three musicians who are truly fluent in the unspoken language of jazz.

Alex Bodie, a college student sitting next to me at the show, described it this way:

“The combination of Reid Anderson's ‘I Love Tory Spelling’ t-shirt, Ethan Iverson's mellow sense of humor, and David King's random outbursts during songs made The Bad Plus the most personable and intimate band I've seen live."

Fly - 1/14/07 at The Village Vanguard

Fly, a trio featuring Mark Turner on tenor sax, Larry Grenadier on bass and Jeff Ballard on drums ended a week-long run at The Village Vanguard with an electric performance on Sunday night. Grenadier and Ballard continue to impress as one of the tightest rhythm sections out there, most notably elsewhere with their work on Brad Mehldau’s Day Is Done and on the forthcoming Metheny/Mehldau ensemble album. Fly is a stage for these three dynamic musicians to push the envelope of modern jazz. Together with groups like Happy Apple, The Bad Plus, and E.S.T., I think they are redefining the expectations of a modern jazz trio.

They put it this way:

"Fly is progressively bringing together many musical elements, traditions, histories and mysteries," says Turner. "Multiplicity is presented under an unassuming hat. In other words, we are working toward saying it all without saying it all, expressing complexity by simplicity. Musically speaking, we are creating songs that can be heard on a number of levels and from a variety of different viewpoints."

Ballard also points out that Fly expands on the trio format. "There is a density in our songs and arrangements. With few instruments, we create a full ensemble sound."

From the opening tune on Sunday night, the audience was visibly entranced by Ballard’s ferocious rhythms. It’s not even that he leads with challenging patterns and fills; his relaxed stature seems to take him to a place from which complex polyrhythms and syncopated phrases emerge with an excitingly unpredictable spontaneity.

The group seamlessly moved from solo sections to melodies and back again: the tunes were at once borderless, yet at the same time inflected with a highly-structured feel. A syncopated Ballard solo would smoothly transition into a tight melody, played in unison by Turner and Grenadier and embellished by Ballard’s cymbal hits. It had the energy of big-band jazz, yet, as Ballard observed, a certain density that never let you feel assured you knew where the piece was going, or to where it might return.

Two compositions in the first set stood out in particular: Turner’s “Supersister” and Grenadier’s “State of the Union”, a track from the groups’ 2004 self-titled release. State of the Union, a ponderous, brooding piece, began with Grenadier’s gentle melody played on the upper register of his acoustic bass. Turner entered soon thereafter and carried the head. Ballard stayed with brushes until deep into the song, letting his hits resound on a sizzle-cymbal.

In all, this was a stunning show, more than a showcase of three top jazz players: it was a feat of intergroup balance and understanding that, for me, cemented Fly as a top trio in today’s scene.

I’ll be back to catch The Bad Plus at the VV at the end of January. Stay tuned.