Randy Brecker and Michael Brecker were brothers who led a group of New York session musicians that included Don Grolnick and Will Lee. The Brecker Brothers Band was one of the most creative and intelligent fusion bands when they made their choice. Randy, the chief composer/trumpeter, wrote some of his best songs. They were melodically unpredictable and complex, harmonically complex and inside/out bop heads played with an inexplicable precision over a background of funk rhythms. The Breckers, unlike most jazz-funk of the time (then or now), kept the pandering to an absolute minimum on their first album. Although it was commercially successful, 1975’s Back to Back was also an artistic success. The Brothers’ music was a clever combination of extended pop forms and top-notch jazz improvisation. They also used sophisticated compositional techniques. The temptation to sell many records was evidently too strong for later albums. The band lost a lot of creativity with every album that followed, even the excellent first. Almost every record contained something to be proud of. In the early ’90s RCA released two compilation CDs which combined the best of the band’s purely instrumental, jazz-based work. The brothers had stopped working together by 1982, but they did reunite for recording and touring in the early 1990s. Allmusic
