Search Results for: Dave Brubeck

Just wanted you to know that FINALLY we have a website. It’s still in formation and we welcome any suggestions. It was created by Brian Chauley, former Fellow at Brubeck Institute and now assistant to the Exec. Director. We hope to do more by the addition of a newsletter and more photographs, and current news re: concerts etc. So visit us at davebrubeck.com.

Happy Spring to All!

Dave and Iola

Someone known to me only by the e-mail handle “Bloorondo” pointed out links to a pair of Dave Brubeck video performances new to me and, perhaps, to you. The first, “All The Things You Are,” was at a concert in Berlin in 1972 when Gerry Mulligan was the saxophonist in the Brubeck Quartet and Paul Desmond joined them on tour. Jack Six was the bassist, Alan Dawson the drummer. Brubeck, Mulligan and Six are turned out in seventies fashions, including lots of hair. Be sure to notice Brubeck’s trousers; not that you could help it. Dawson’s and Desmond’s wardrobes and hairdos are, as usual, restrained. Desmond is wearing his frequent attire of later years, The Suit (see Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond, page 257). The playing by all hands is at a high level, with interesting Desmond/Mulligan counterpoint at the end. Camera work, direction and audio quality are good. To watch it, click here.

“In Your Own Sweet Way” is by the classic Brubeck Quartet with Desmond, Eugene Wright and Joe Morello. My guess is 1964, but it could be a year or two either way. This is a notably lyrical performance by Desmond, with the kind of assistance from Brubeck that led Desmond to frequently praise him as an ideal accompanist. The Wright-Morello mutual admiration society is in session. Click here.

Whether sponsored by the State Department or off to see the world on their own, the Dave Brubeck Quartet practiced their share of cultural diplomacy in the 1950s and ’60s. You Tube, that never-ending source of surprises and occasional frustrations, has come up with video of the DBQ on a 1962 Australian television program. The story goes that the tape of the show was lost for more than two decades and barely saved from destruction once it was found. It includes contrived conversations that, like the host’s introductions, sound scripted. Brubeck, Paul Desmond, Gene Wright and Joe Morello appear amused by the awkward show-biz schtick. Their playing is correspondingly light-hearted.
The program includes a rarity in the Brubeck canon, a guest vocalist, Laurie Loman, who manages to lose track of the number of bars in “When You’re Smiling.” Unfazed, Desmond follows with a solo on a song he may have been playing for the first time. He works in a quote from “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” perfect for the circumstances. The program is divided into seven You Tube segments, all of which you will find on this page.
Brubeck disbanded the quartet in 1967, so he could devote his time and energy to composing long-form works. The next year he completed his oratorio The Light In The Wilderness, which he still presents when he can marshal the musical troops it requires. He gave the piece its fortieth-anniversary performance last night in Athens, Georgia. As usual, his wife is on the road with him. In The Atlanta Journal-Constituion Bo Emerson has a story about Brubeck working with an orchestra and chorus to prepare the piece.

Iola Brubeck is in the adjoining room at the Holiday Inn in Athens, working on a laptop, busy writing the history of the man she married 65 years ago. A laptop? Dave Brubeck doesn’t mess around with that kind of keyboard. Says his longtime conductor Russell Gloyd, “Dave has trouble with the pause button on his tape player.”
The tape player may outfox him, but Brubeck handles larger forces with aplomb. During a weeklong residency at the University of Georgia, which continues through Friday, he will (with Gloyd’s assistance) command a 140-voice choir, a full-sized symphony orchestra, a big band, a jazz vocal ensemble and his quartet.

To read all of Emerson’s story, go here.
Comment On The Australian Video

In 1962 I was still at school in New Zealand,and I flew up from my home
town to Auckland in a DC-3 so I could see the concert.
They must have gone to New Zealand either before or after the Australia
tour.
I still have the program somewhere!
John Pickworth

Here is a listening tip for Friday, December 7, gleaned from a Dave Brubeck Quartet listserve:

To celebrate pianist Dave Brubeck’s 87th birthday, Alyn Shipton introduces part of a conversation with Brubeck recorded during his quartet’s 40th anniversary tour of the UK, in which he selects some of his favourite recordings from a catalogue that includes over 100 albums.
As well as such perennial favourites as “Take Five” by his historic quartet with Paul Desmond, Brubeck also looks at his collaborations with Gerry Mulligan, the London Symphony Orchestra and his present day band with saxophonist Bobby Militello.

That will be on BBC Radio 3 at 10:30 pm London time. In the US that’s 5:30 pm EDT, 2:30 pm PDT. For internet listeners, BBC 3 has streaming audio.

Gail Pettis, May I Come In? (Origin). In her recording debut, the Seattle singer chooses a mixture of familiar standards and less-well-known songs, delivering them with warmth and intelligent interpretation. Pettis concentrates on serving songwriters’ intentions, but her delighted treatment of Jimmy McHugh’s “I Just Found Out About Love” includes one of two scatting episodes in the collection. She scats with musicianly understanding of harmony. There is not a lot of that going around among singers. Pettis gives “Black Coffee” its bluesy due but avoids the affected emotion with which many singers are tempted to smother the song.
In “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Your Face,” bassist Jeff Johnson, with his customary strength and sensitivity, is the singer’s sole accompanist. “We’ve Met Before” is a duet between Pettis and pianist Randy Halberstadt. With this lovely song, Halberstadt may have composed a new standard. He and Johnson are on half of the tracks. On the other half, Darin Clendenin is the pianist, Clipper Anderson the bassist, Pacific Northwest stalwarts in good form, as is Mark Ivester, who plays drums throughout. Pettis keeps her considerable vocal power in reserve, using it with restraint and taste. In the burgeoning population of new singers, she is a standout.
Dave Brubeck, Indian Summer (Telarc). Brubeck’s solo piano excursion through the autumn of his life has Brahmsian gravity, dignity and reflection. It also has moments of playfulness and no lack of harmonic audacity, as in his polytonal opening bars of “I Don’t Stand a Ghost of a Chance With You.” He includes “Sweet Lorraine,” “Memories of You” and “Indian Summer” along with other standards and a few of his own tunes, among them “Summer Song” and his tribute to Chopin, “Thank You.” He reaches back to his youth for the anthem of his college, reharmonized and movingly expressed. Brubeck has taken a lot of knocks for the vigor of his playing. Here, he reminds us that at the lower end of his dynamic range he has one of the softest touches of any pianist–and those harmonies, still daring after all these years. This is one for quiet evenings in front of the fire.
Joe Chindamo, Smokingun (Newmarket Music). A couple of weeks ago, in reviewing Karrin Allyson’s performance with the Yakima Symphony Orchestra, I wrote:

Allyson sang with her customary charm, musicianship and irrepressible energy, occasionally spelling pianist Joe Chindamo at the keyboard while he played accordian. Chindamo, an Australian new to me, was impressive as an accompanist and in solo. His piano chorus on Leonard Bernstein’s “Some Other Time,” alluding to Bill Evans, was a highlight of the evening.

Later that week, I heard Chindamo (pronounced Kin-dámo) at greater length when Allyson and her quartet played The Seasons, and was thoroughly taken with his playing. From there, they went to New York for a week at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola. His tour with Allyson ended, Chindamo is back in Melbourne where he is a mainstay of Australian jazz and of movie sound stages. Listening to his trio’s CD Smokingun, with alto saxophonist Graeme Lyall as guest artist, I understand why. He assembles a potpourri of tunes that would seem unlikely album mates and makes sense of them individually and as a collection, even while giving them unconventional treatments. Slow versions of “Take Five” (Chindamo on accordian) and “The Entertainer” (Chindamo on piano, Lyall slinky on soprano sax), “Goodbye Porkpie Hat” and Dvorak’s “Going Home” theme succeed in deliciously different ways. Joni Mitchell’s “God Must Be a Boogie Man” becomes an adventure in pointilism and rhythm shifts. Chindamo and Lyall liberate the improvisational possibilities in two unlikely movie themes, “The Magnificent Seven” and “Goldfinger.”
Lyall manages to refer to Paul Desmond’s style without imitating Desmond except for what seems to be an affectionate outright tribute in “Look For the Silver Lining.” He and the trio work together with the kind of reactive empathy that Desmond and Brubeck often achieved, although the resemblance of this group to the Brubeck quartet doesn’t go much beyond the instrumentation. Bassist Phil Rex and drummer David Beck, also little known outside Australia, are world class.
This video of Chindamo playing “But Not For Me” at Italy’s Umbria festival in 2005 will acquaint you with his solo style. At the end of another clip, with his trio, he delivers to his fellow Australians a confidence-building speech about their cultural uniqueness. It would seem inevitable that we non-Aussies will be hearing more from Joe Chindamo.

Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond in duo were one of the great treats of the seventies even as Desmond contended with the lung cancer that was soon to end his life. Someone caught one of their reunions on tape–a short blues performance culminating in the “Audrey” or “Balcony Rock” melody that they favored for more than a quarter of a century. This is another example of why Desmond said that Brubeck was his ideal accompanist.

Good old video keeps surfacing. The new Jazz Icons series of DVDs (about which, more later) is a prime example. Short clips show up on YouTube, Google, Yahoo and whatever new video sites have materialized in the past half hour. A recent addition to the YouTube gallery is a 1961 performance in Holland by the Dave Brubeck Quartet. They play “St. Louis Blues,” for years Brubeck’s concert opener. All hands solo at length following Brubeck’s introduction, beginnning with Paul Desmond’s five choruses overflowing with invented melodies and a couple of borrowed ones. This is prime Desmond about halfway through his nearly two decades with the quartet. Sound and video quality are good. To see and hear the DBQ when “Take Five” had made them even more famous, click on this link.
Watch for terrific closeups of Eugene Wright, smile in full flower, reacting to Brubeck’s solo then continuing to smile through his own. Listen to Desmond make “The Lady in Red” almost fit behind Brubeck’s penultimate sixteen bars before the coda. These guys did have fun.

The You Tube website has put up a seven-minute video of the Dave Brubeck Quartet playing Brubeck’s “London Flat London Sharp” at the North Sea Jazz Festival. Sound, production qualiy, camera work and direction—except for one brief asleep-at-the-switch moment—are excellent. Bobby Militello’s alto solo is one of the most cogent I’ve heard from him. It’s interesting to watch Brubeck digging Michael Moore as he comps for Moore’s bass solo. The first half of Brubeck’s own solo is about as close to daintiness as you’re likely to hear from him, but before it’s over, he unleashes both hands on the piece’s substantial harmonies. To see and hear it, go here. The same page of the site has two video performances of “Take Five” by the classic Brubeck quartet with Paul Desmond, Gene Wright and Joe Morello and one by the current group.

Blogger John Salmon of Magritte’s Apple writes a followup to the recent review of a Dave Brubeck concert:

I did a little review of Dave’s Mass the other day.
Randy Jones and Bobby Militello are veterans of the Maynard Ferguson band, one of jazz’s great farm teams. When Bobby was on MF’s band he played baritone (and some flute); it’s nice to see that with Dave he gets to play an instrument that won’t wreck his back.
I’m wondering if others find themselves enjoying Brubeck’s playing more today than in the classic quartet days? He does seem to rely more on single note lines, but I’m not sure his playing has changed as much as my tastes have.

The American premier of Chris Brubeck’s new Prague Concerto for Bass Trombone and Orchestra will take place with the Yakima Symphony Orchestra on Saturday, January 21. The concerto reflects Brubeck’s rangy interests and skills in classical music, jazz and rock. That may indicate a bouillabaisse of a composition, but the piece has coherence, unity, and good-natured seriousness. The concerto comes in three movements titled “The Return of the Prince,” “Song of the Mountains” and “Dance of the Neocons.” I think that it is likely to further advance the reputation of Dave Brubeck’s number-three son as an American composer of standing and substance. The concerto is one of three of his compositions on this new compact disc. River of Song has ravishing singing by Frederica von Stade; Brubeck keeps good company. The other major work on the YSO program will be Leonard Bernstein’s Three Dance Episodes from On The Town.
In addition to the trombone concerto, the concert will present the quartet led by Chris, playing trombone and bass, and his brother Danny, a gifted drummer. Their colleagues are guitarist Mike DeMicco and pianist Chuck Lamb. They will play three pieces by Dave Brubeck—“Cassandra,” “In Your Own Sweet Way,” and “Blue Rondo a la Turk,” in addition to Chris Brubeck’s “We’re Still in Love After All These Years.” If there is an encore, it’s likely to be—guess what? Right: “Take Five.”
I was asked to write the program notes for the symphony concert and to chat about the music with the YSO music director and conductor, Brooke Cresswell. You can hear our conversation in four short podcasts on the YSO website.
Earlier next week, on Wednesday, January 18, The Brubeck Brothers Quartet will play at The Seasons, that acoustically blessed former church, in another of what is becoming an impressive series of concerts. To many Rifftides readers, Yakima, Washington, may as well be on the far side of the moon, but the word is getting around in jazz and classical circles that a gig at The Seasons is something to be desired.

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.

Dave Brubeck, touring at eight-four as if he were twenty-four, is in California—momentarily. Saturday night at eight, he will play in Sacramento at the Radisson Hotel Grove Amphitheater with his quartet (Bobby Militello, alto saxophone; Michael Moore, bass; Randy Jones, drums). A few weeks ago at Carnegie Hall, during the JVC Jazz Festival Newport, Brubeck began noodling one of his introductions designed to mystify his sidemen. It is one thing for a pianist to play an obscure introduction to a piece in the band’s repertoire. Erroll Garner made a specialty of it. It is quite another to offer an inscrutable introduction to a song the band has never played. Few leaders outside the bailiwick of free jazz would take that chance in a major concert, but I have often seen Brubeck do it. At World Series time a couple of years ago, he sprang “Take Me Out To The Ball Game” on the quartet. Once they figured out what the boss was pitching, they knocked it out of the park—er—theater.
At Carnegie, it began to dawn on Militello, Moore and Jones that Brubeck was slyly unveiling “Sleep,” a 1923 chestnut by Earl Lebieg that for years was the theme song of Fred Waring’s Pennsylvanians. Although a few jazz musicians, including Benny Carter and Tommy Dorsey, recorded it, “Sleep” hardly became a staple of the repertoire. I’d bet that most jazz players don’t know it exists. The Brubeck group had certainly never played it together, but Militello, Moore and Jones were just old enough to have it lurking in their consciousnesses. Once the puzzlement subsided, grins appeared on the sidemens’ faces. They exchanged glances, took a simultaneous deep breath and dove in. “Sleep” is not “Giant Steps” in the chord changes department. To call the song simple may be upgrading it. The structure and melody are basic—two sixteen-bar sections that are nearly identical. But this was a demonstration of the truth of the Sy Oliver-Trummy Young maxim, ‘Tain’t What You Do (It’s The Way That’Cha Do It). The piece developed momentum, good cheer and, ultimately, an intensity that captivated the audience. It was the hit of the evening, and it was no mere novelty. It was thoroughly creative music making.
I was standing backstage next to the tenor saxophonist Harry Allen. As a member of John Pizzarrelli’s band, he was about to follow Brubeck. We listened and watched on monitors, and Allen said, “Can you believe the way these guys are swinging?”
In addition to springing surprises with simple tunes, Brubeck continues his complex older ways. He works in time signatures, polyrhythms and polytonalities that, after a half-century of his pioneering them in jazz, few other musicians have tackled, let alone mastered. One who has them comfortably in mind and under his fingers is Joe Gilman, a pianist who might be much better known as a player if he didn’t devote himself primarily to education. Gilman is one of the teachers at the Brubeck Institute Summer Colony for gifted young jazz players and a professor at American River College in California. He can not only play Brubeck’s demanding music, he can also explain it, as he does in a five-and-a-half-minute radio piece produced by Paul Conley of KXJZ in Sacramento. You can hear it by clicking here and then clicking on the “listen” icon on the Capitol Public Radio page.

Who is your favorite singer from the Canadian province of Newfoundland? Don’t have one? If you listen to Heather Bambrick, that could change. Ms. Bambrick is a nominee for the Juno Awards, Canada’s equivalent of the Grammys. She is known in her country for singing with sensitivity about things that matter to her. Among them are racism, homophobia and other contemporary expressions of interpersonal aggression. She sets the tone of her new album Fine State, with “You’ve Got To Be Taught,” Rodgers’ and Hammerstein’s anti-prejudice anthem from the musical South Pacific. A dedicated Canadian, she pays tribute to her home province, with “Homeland,” which she also uses in the CD’s promotional video.

Other highlights of the Bambrick album are Milton Nascimento’s modern classic “Bridges”; Rodgers’ and Hart’s “It Never Entered My Mind;” an adaptation of Lalo Schifrin’s and Gene Lees’s “The Right To Love,” and several song composed or co-written by written by Ms. Bambrick herself. Among the impressive guest instrumental soloist are flugelhornist Chase Sanborn and, on several tracks, pianist Andrea Farrugia.

Thanks to Terri Hinte for calling our attention to the new album by New York Voices. In their third decade together, the group’s Reminiscing In Tempo fortifies their reputation as a vocal ensemble whose musicality matches their ability to reach deeply into the rhythmic heritage that gives jazz its unique place in world culture. I would be surprised if the lead track doesn’t grab the most attention, in part because when “Round, Round, Round” debuted as part of the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s Time Out album in 1959, it became ubiquitous on radios and juke boxes. Then, it was known as “Blue Rondo á la Turk” and was nearly as famous as “Take Five.” New York Voices adapts the Al Jarreau version that itself came near Top-40 status in the fifties. Other pieces in this intriguing collection: the Ellington title track “Reminiscing In Tempo,” “Avalon,” Lennon and McCartney’s “In My Life” Cole Porter’s “It’s Alright With Me,” and an “Avalon” so speedy that Al Jolson, who wrote the song, might have had trouble keeping up with it. This is an album of variety and depth, beautifully sung.

Thomas Cunniffe’s excellent weblog Jazz History Online has managed to find the performance by Paul Desmond and his Canadian quartet originally broadcast in 1975 by the Canadian Broadcasting Company. That is good news for listeners who continue to follow the alto saxophonist’s career after the dissolution of the Dave Brubeck Quartet, in which he starred with Brubeck for seventeen years. Cunniffe also presents the complete interview of Desmond by the CBC’s Mary Lou Finlay, with enthusiastic, nearly rhapsodic, commentary by her co-host Paul Soles. Previously, the interview has aired in the United States mostly in bits and pieces. To see all of the interview, the segment by Desmond’s Toronto-based quartet, and Tom Cunniffe’s extensive backgrounder, click here.

Thanks to Thomas Cunniffe, Mary Lou Finlay and the CBC for sharing an important moment in jazz history.

Have a good weekend.

Forty-nine years ago this evening at the White House in Washington, DC, the president of the United States hosted a party honoring Duke Ellington on his 70th birthday and presenting him with the Presidential Medal Of Freedom. The United States Information Agency produced a short film about the occasion. The soundtrack of the film is a sort of collage incorporating bits of the evening’s music. The narrator is Willis Conover of the Voice Of America, who played an essential role in putting the evening together.