Brooks founded Summit with Zakir Hussain, Steve Smith, Kai Eckhardt and Fareed Haque;[3] Aspada with Selvaganesh Vinayakaram, Osam Ezzeldin, and Kai Eckhardt;[4] Bombay Jazz with Larry Coryell and Ronu Majumdar;[3] the Raga Bop Trio with Steve Smith and Carnatic guitarist Prasanna; and Elements with Indian violinist Kala Ramnath and Dutch harpist Gwyneth Wentink.
[5] Brooks has toured extensively with blues and R&B artists Etta James,[6] Frankie Lee, Freddie Hughes, Otis Rush, Albert Collins, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Sonny Rhodes as well as pop innovators Ray Manzarek, The Temptations, The Four Tops, and jazz luminaries, John McLaughlin, Larry Coryell, Wadada Leo Smith, and Anthony Braxton.
[7] Brooks is the pioneer of Indo-Jazz and has done significant cross-cultural explorations with leading artists of Indian Classical Music including Zakir Hussain, Hariprasad Chaurasia, Sultan Khan, Shankar Mahadevan, Krishna Bhatt, L. Subramaniam, V. Selvaganesh, Kala Ramnath, Mahesh Kale and many others.
Brooks received a 2012 Met Life Creative Connections grant to present a workshop on Jazz and the Spoken Word with McClure and a 2012 New Music USA, Composer Assistance Program award to attend the premiere of his work for solo harp, The Alchemy of Happiness at the Gaudeamus Muziekweek.
In 2013 Brooks received USArtists touring grant to appear with his group Summit at jazz festivals in Mumbai, Pune and Kolkata and a 2014 San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music commission to compose and present Ghalib a new work for saxophone, sarode and tabla.