When I was in college it was said that there are two kinds of tenor sax players in the world, the ones who want to be John Coltrane and the ones who want to be Michael Brecker. I wanted to be Michael Brecker, and I believe Michael Brecker wanted to be John Coltrane.

As much as I love great pop songwriting, and soulful singing, and punch-you-in-the-mouth guitar playing, there are few things that will reduce me to a puddle of sloppy tears faster than the immeasurable virtuosity and expressiveness of Michael Brecker’s playing.

One of the tunes I’ve been using to pull my sax chops back together is one of Brecker’s tunes called Itsbynne Reel. This was always one of my favorites and it’s a real pain in the neck to play.

I was looking for a free version of this tune on the net so I could have something to play along with and I found this very unorthodox rendition on You Tube. You must listen to this. This is musical mastery of the highest order.

There is a long, solo accordion bit at the beginning that you might want to skip. Go straight to 2:45 and strap yourself in. Here is a transcription of the album version of the tune if you want to follow along with the head.

I was actually brought to tears twice today listening to music. Here is the other thing that made me a girl. This is Jonny Lang on Leno last night. Thanks to Jeff H. for the heads-up on this.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 17th, 2009 at 9:48 pm and is filed under By Drew, Day to Day, Studies, Videos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.