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Dave Brubeck is good for your brain

Thu, 13 Dec 2012 17:37:00 +0000

Jazz legend Dave Brubeck died December 5, just one day before his 92nd birthday. The pianist and composer was an innovator, especially when it came to combining rhythms and meters in new ways. "He sort of tired of the traditional patterns of jazz," says Patrick Langham, a saxophonist and faculty member of the Brubeck Institute at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, Calif.

Time Out, the hit 1959 album by the Dave Brubeck Quartet, was one of the first popular jazz works to explore meters beyond the traditional 4/4 and 3/4. (The first number, which is the top number of the time signature in sheet music, represents the number of beats in the measure, and the second number represents the note value that receives one beat. 4/4 means that there are four beats and a quarter note lasts for one beat, yielding four quarter notes in each measure.) "Take Five" and "Blue Rondo a la Turk," two of Brubeck's most popular works, are both on Time Out.

Salon readers remember Dave Brubeck

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 17:44:00 +0000

Daniel Mense:

Most interesting fact about Brubeck: Sometime close to his graduation from Oberlin College one of Brubeck’s professors found out that he was unable to read music. Upon learning this, the school nearly restricted him from graduating, however, they were able to cut a deal and that was: They would let him graduate if he swore to never teach music to anyone – and so he went on to become one of the most influential and innovative musicians of all time. Tell me one person in history that ever graduated from college or university that could not read – what a genius and inspiration for us all!!!!!!

Gabe Johnson:

"Fujiyama" -- American jazz based on Japanese themes and tonality: In lesser hands this would be a recipe for disaster, but Brubeck's solo here is a thing of transcendent beauty.

Abraham Beeson:

From an album of time signature experiments came some of Dave's biggest hits. Lesser known, but my fave has always been the 3/4-4/4 switcheroos of "Three to Get Ready."

Jazz legend Dave Brubeck dies at 91

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 16:57:00 +0000

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Jazz composer and pianist Dave Brubeck, whose pioneering style in pieces such as "Take Five" caught listeners' ears with exotic, challenging rhythms, has died. He was 91.

Brubeck died Wednesday morning of heart failure after being stricken while on his way to a cardiology appointment with his son Darius, said his manager Russell Gloyd. Brubeck would have turned 92 on Thursday.

Brubeck had a career that spanned almost all American jazz since World War II. He formed The Dave Brubeck Quartet in 1951 and was the first modern jazz musician to be pictured on the cover of Time magazine — on Nov. 8, 1954 — and he helped define the swinging, smoky rhythms of 1950s and '60s club jazz.

The seminal album "Time Out," released by the quartet in 1959, was the first ever million-selling jazz LP, and is still among the best-selling jazz albums of all time. It opens with "Blue Rondo a la Turk" in 9/8 time — nine beats to the measure instead of the customary two, three or four beats.

A piano-and-saxophone whirlwind based loosely on a Mozart piece, "Blue Rondo" eventually intercuts between Brubeck's piano and a more traditional 4/4 jazz rhythm.