Monterey, Brubeck, Desmond, Stravinsky

I am off to California and a book signing at the Monterey Jazz Festival Saturday afternoon from 3 to 6 pm at the Tower Records booth. See you there, I hope. What book? Glad you asked. It's Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond, still available after all these months. Desmond and Dave Brubeck were frequent performers with Brubeck's quartet at Monterey. Dave is not there this year, but I'm looking forward to hearing Sonny Rollins and John Handy, among others. if there is a spare moment now and then, I'll be posting brief reports.

In Take Five, I go on a bit about Paul's love affair with the works of Igor Stravinsky. He was particularly smitten with Petrouchka and The Rite of Spring and often quoted them in ingenious ways. I am grateful to Rifftides reader Garret Gannuch for pointing me toward a web site called Casa Jonsson and a page that discusses the Brubeck-Desmond-Stravinsky axis. It provides audio samples of Stravinsky's works and of the ways Desmond and Brubeck used them in their improvisations in Jazz At Oberlin. It's educational; good, clean fun for the whole family.

If you would like to be in touch, you'll find an e-mail address in the right-hand column. See you next week, if not sooner.