Michael Brecker Quindectet, Wide Angles

4 / 5 stars
Michael Brecker

Michael Brecker, the 54-year-old Philadelphia-born saxophonist, has succeeded in taking the late John Coltrane's revelatory sax legacy to new destinations without leaving jazz (as the world-musical Coltrane disciple Jan Garbarek did) or arriving at abstract free-improvisation. That tightrope-walk has made Brecker one of the biggest box-office certainties worldwide.

Roots in the jazz past combined with a restless urge to burst open new doors with a phenomenal instrumental technique have kept Brecker at the top of the tree. His competence has inspired many young horn players to try to outgun him for speed alone, Brecker remains unique in his combination of ferocity and an enigmatic impassivity, which gives his soloing the quality of a kind of turbulent meditation. His originality of phrasing and tonal nuance continues to expand, and rarely fails him even at the most headlong tempos. The Los Angeles Times referred to his "stone-cold thrilling improvisations", but some people find the stone-cold aspect too lacking in emotion.

Over the years this might occasionally have been a defensible case, but recently the saxophonist has addressed it with increasing persuasiveness. If Coltrane was his technical model from his teens, Universal stablemate Wayne Shorter has increasingly sounded like a spiritual guide for the 21st-century Michael Brecker. Shorter's renaissance as the leader of perhaps the most collectively-sensitive and melodically startling contemporary jazz quartet in the world has had an audible impact at several points on this new Brecker disc.

Wide Angles also has a British connection, and one that goes deeper than simply the presence of Iain Dixon on clarinets. Brecker came to the UK at the beginning of 2002 to work with an Anglo-American ensemble, setting a mixture of his current and past work in a broader orchestral context, including oboe and strings.

That tour gave Brecker the idea for Wide Angles, but in the event he and his arranger Gil Goldstein have produced a new suite-like sequence of pieces for this set - Brecker's old composing mentor, the late Don Grolnick, is the only guest contributor. That might be a drawback to those hoping for the UK-tour repertoire, which included such striking older favourites as Brecker's 1987 Syzygy, the Coltranesque Arc of the Pendulum or the regular live-show burner Slings and Arrows.

The combination of Brecker's often hectically cryptic composing style and the unrelenting density of his improvisations also turns some episodes into high-energy drones at times. Over the 70-odd minutes (though trumpeter Alex Sipiagin, guitarist Adam Rogers and trombonist Robin Eubanks briefly pass through the spotlight, and bassist John Patitucci is a powerhouse under the band all through the set) the overwhelming dependency on the leader's inventiveness stretches even his resources, and points up how successfully Wayne Shorter sidesteps this snag by making his bands more reflective, reflexive and cooperative ventures.

But, for all that, the project is a mid-life leap in Brecker's career, much of it bristling with fresh ideas, and the warmly, intricate Gil Evans-influenced arrangements clearly oblige the saxophonist to rethink the ways he negotiates solos. The fast opener, Loxodrome, sounds as if it were built on phrases lifted from his virtuoso unaccompanied-sax routine, in its staccato phrasing and oscillating bell-notes and wails. It pursues a favourite course of the leader's, where labyrinthine themes keep visiting new locations at a point where it sounds as if a melodic staging-post or a resolution might be due. The Wayne Shorter influence is powerful in the deceptive melody, and in Brecker's stealthy solo arrival and haunting long notes on Cool Day In Hell, and the voices of the string ensemble, Eubanks's rich trombone and Iain Dixon's bass clarinet blend elegantly on it.

Shorter's ethereal touch also rests on the ballad Angle of Repose, though the flute and Latin-shuffle intro to Timbukto (ushering in a dark, hypnotically-repeating sax line eventually shadowed by muted brass), eventually gives way to the kind of furious Brecker tenor storm that can allow the concentration to drift in the end.

It's half an hour into the album before we hear another solo contribution other than the exquisite offering from Patitucci - Sipiagin's hot but elegant boppish trumpet solo on the sixth track's Scylla - but Brecker's increasingly patient tenderness is in evidence on Grolnick's Ellington-like Evening Faces, there's a late-Miles funk drive to Modus Operandy, and an elegant drift out of chamber-music grace into very understated swing on the atmospheric Never Alone.

"I like to look back, but I try not to stare," is one of Brecker's mantras. It has given this disc much of its imaginative audacity.