David Warren Brubeck (December 6, 1920 – December 5, 2012) was an American jazz pianist and composer. Often regarded as a foremost exponent of cool jazz, Brubeck’s work is characterized by unusual time signatures and superimposing contrasting rhythms, meters, and tonalities.
Born in Concord, California, Brubeck was drafted into the US Army, but was spared from combat service when a Red Cross show he had played at became a hit. Within the US Army, Brubeck formed one of the first racially diverse bands. In 1951, Brubeck formed the Dave Brubeck Quartet, which kept its name despite shifting personnel.
The most successful—and prolific—lineup of the quartet was the one between 1958 and 1968. This lineup, in addition to Brubeck, featured saxophonist Paul Desmond, bassist Eugene Wright and drummer Joe Morello. A U.S. Department of State-sponsored tour in 1958 featuring the band inspired Brubeck to record the 1958 album Jazz Impressions of Eurasia. A later work, despite its esoteric theme and contrarian time signatures, Time Out became Brubeck’s highest-selling album, and the first jazz album to sell over one million copies. The lead single from the album, “Take Five”, a tune written by Desmond in 5
4 time, similarly became the highest-selling jazz single of all time. The quartet followed up Time Out with four other albums in non-standard time signatures, and some of the other songs from this series became hits as well, including “Blue Rondo à la Turk” and “Unsquare Dance”.
Brubeck continued releasing music until his death in 2012.
Brubeck’s style ranged from refined to bombastic, reflecting both his mother’s classical training and his own improvizational skills. He expressed elements of atonality and fugue. Brubeck, with Desmond, used elements of West Coast jazz near the height of its popularity, combining them with the unorthodox time signatures seen in Time Out. Like many of his contemporaries, Brubeck played into the style of the French composer Darius Milhaud, especially his earlier works, including “Serenade Suite” and “Playland-At-The-Beach”. Brubeck’s fusion of classical music and jazz would come to be known as “third stream”, although Brubeck’s use of third stream would predate the coining of the term. John Fordham of The Guardian commented: “Brubeck’s real achievement was to blend European compositional ideas, very demanding rhythmic structures, jazz song-forms and improvisation in expressive and accessible ways.”
Brubeck was the recipient of several music awards and honors throughout his lifetime. In 1996, Brubeck received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2008, Brubeck was inducted into the California Hall of Fame, and a year later, he was given an honorary Doctor of Music degree from Berklee College of Music. Brubeck’s 1959 album Time Out was added to the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry in 2005. Noted as “one of Jazz’s first pop stars” by the Los Angeles Times, Brubeck rejected his fame, and felt uncomfortable with Time magazine featuring him on the cover before Duke Ellington. (wikipedia)
Although a touch underrated, Jazz at Oberlin is one of the early Dave Brubeck classic recordings. The interplay between the pianist-leader and altoist Paul Desmond on “Perdido” borders on the miraculous, and their renditions of “The Way You Look Tonight,” “How High the Moon” and “Stardust” are quite memorable. Brubeck’s piano playing on “These Foolish Things” is so percussive and atonal in one spot as to sound like Cecil Taylor, who would not emerge for another two years. With bassist Ron Crotty and drummer Lloyd Davis giving the Quartet quiet and steady support, Brubeck and Desmond were free to play at their most adventurous. Highly recommended. (by Scott Yanow)
Recorded live in Finney Chapel on the campus of Oberlin College in Ohio, this landmark album is essential listening in any collection. A breakthrough in the Cool Jazz style, this event also marked the change in acceptance of this music as both a serious area of study in the classroom and as respected entertainment in the concert hall (Matthew Vacca)
And … Paul Desmond is also a treat here !
Personnel:
Dave Brubeck (piano)
Ron Crotty (bass)
Lloyd Davis (drums)
Paul Desmond (saxophone)
Alternate edition:
Tracklist:
01. These Foolish Things (Remind Me Of You) (Strachey/Marvell/Link) 6.36
02. The Way You Look Tonight (Kern/Fields) 7.46
03. Perdido (Tizol) 7.51
04. Stardust (Carmichael/Parrish) 6.40
+
05. How High The Moon (Lewis) 9.01
More from Dave Brubeck:
Buried Treasures is a 1967 live album by Dave Brubeck and his quartet, recorded during their tour of Mexico. It was released in 1998. A second live album recorded on their tour, Bravo! Brubeck!, was released in July 1967.
This album has some really all-time definitive best versions of several songs. Unsquare Dance is outstanding. Brubeck did nothing in 4/4 time. The audience is clapping, in time, the band picks up on it, rests for two beats, making the audience part of the music and then picks up the song on the next beat. This was improvised, not planned. That’s Jazz!
Jazz at the College of the Pacific is a live album by Dave Brubeck Quartet. It was recorded and released in December 1953 on Fantasy Records as F 3223. The cover was designed by Ed Colker and drawn by Arnold Roth. Critic Nat Hentoff wrote on Down Beat magazine that the album “ranks with the Oberlin and Storyville sets as the best of Brubeck on record”.
David Warren Brubeck (December 6, 1920 – December 5, 2012) was an American jazz pianist and composer, considered one of the foremost exponents of cool jazz. He wrote a number of jazz standards, including “In Your Own Sweet Way” and “The Duke”. Brubeck’s style ranged from refined to bombastic, reflecting both his mother’s attempts at classical training and his own improvisational skills. His music is known for employing unusual time signatures as well as superimposing contrasting rhythms, meters, and tonalities.
When Dave Brubeck started recording for Concord Jazz in 1979, it was a homecoming for the legendary pianist—literally. Brubeck was born and raised in the little Northern California town of Concord, and his father grazed cattle in the hills around what would one day be the home of the Concord Pavilion (an impressive amphitheater that Concord Jazz founder Carl Jefferson had successfully lobbied the city of Concord to build).
Dave Brubeck was a pioneer in the presentation of intimate concerts in colleges and universities and in the better small concert halls. The show at the Wilshire Ebell theatre, in Los Angeles, was one of the later, and probably one of Brubecks biggest personal triumphs to date.
Jazz pianist Dave Brubeck is best associated with Take Five, the classic track from the 1959 album, Time Out, though the song was composed by Brubeck’s partner and saxophonist Paul Desmond.
Four of the five selections on Brandenburg Gate: Revisited (1963) are new interpretations of Dave Brubeck (piano) classics scored by the pianist’s older sibling, Howard Brubeck, who is likewise the author of the “G Flat Theme,” which is offered here for the first time. By the time of this 1963 platter, the perpetually touring Dave Brubeck Quartet had played behind a few of the North America’s finest ensembles — commencing with a personal invitation extended by Robert Shaw and the San Diego Symphony in 1956. In fact, these expanded arrangements were actually done live before they were recorded in the studio. A similar fate befell material from Brubeck Plays Bernstein Plays Brubeck (1960), which was the Quartet’s earlier orchestral collaboration. “Brandenburg Gate” has been significantly expanded from the version heard on Jazz Impressions of Eurasia (1958). The selection has developed into a side-long suite that includes substantial emotive counterpoint connecting the moody and contemplative strings and the swinging melodic contributions of Paul Desmond (alto sax), Eugene Wright (bass), and Joe Morello (drums). The subtle tension and liberation that exists between the two arguably disparate aggregates prevent either from overpowering the other.
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