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Dave Brubeck
Brubeck's mother studied piano in England and intended to become a concert pianist; at home she taught piano for extra money. Brubeck was not particularly interested in learning by any particular method, but preferred to create his own melodies, and therefore avoided learning to read sheet music. In college Brubeck was nearly expelled when one of his professors discovered that he could not read sheet music. Several of his professors came forward arguing for his ability with counterpoint and harmony, but the school was still afraid that it would cause a scandal, and only agreed to let Brubeck graduate once he promised never to teach piano. After graduating from the University of the Pacific in 1942, Brubeck was drafted into the army and served overseas in George Patton's Third Army during the Battle of the Bulge. He played in a band, quickly integrating it and gaining both popularity and deference. He returned to college after serving nearly 4 years in the army, this time attending Mills College and studying under Darius Milhaud, who encouraged him to study fugue and orchestration but not classical piano. (Oddly enough, most critics consider Brubeck something of a classical pianist playing jazz.)
After completing his studies under Milhaud, Brubeck signed with Berkeley, California's Fantasy Records. He started an octet including Cal Tjader and Paul Desmond. Highly experimental, the group made few recordings and got even fewer paying jobs. A bit discouraged, Brubeck started a trio with two of the members, not including Desmond, who had a gig of his own, and spent several years playing nothing but jazz standards. Brubeck then formed The Dave Brubeck Quartet in 1951, which consisted of Joe Dodge on drums, Bob Bates on bass, Paul Desmond on saxophone, and of course Brubeck on piano. They took up a long residency at San Francisco's Black Hawk nightclub and gained great popularity touring college campuses, recording a series of albums with such titles as Jazz at Oberlin, Jazz Goes to College and Jazz Goes to Junior College. In 1954 he was featured on the cover of Time Magazine, the first Jazz musician to be so honored. In the mid-1950s Bates and Dodge were respectively replaced by Eugene Wright and Joe Morello. Eugene Wright is African-American; in the late 1950s Brubeck cancelled many concerts because the club owners wanted him to bring a different bassist. He also cancelled a television appearance when he found out that the venue intended to keep Wright off-camera.
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Apart from the Jazz Goes to College and the 'Time' series, Brubeck recorded several records featuring his compositions based on local music. Jazz Impressions of USA, Jazz Impressions of Japan, Jazz Impressions of Eurasia and Jazz Impressions of New York may not be his most famous works, but all are brilliant examples of the quartet's studio work.Tags
Verve's Bossa Nova U.S.A.
by Arnaldo DeSouteiro
Paul Desmond: Samba with Some Barbecue Originally titled “Struttin' with Some Barbecue" in 1941, this Satchmo tune lost its Dixie beat and got a bossa groove in the hands of the infallible Don Sebesky. Brazilian drummer Airto Moreira, then a newcomer in the New York jazz scene, provides a fiery propulsion to Paul Desmond's lyrical approach and “dry martini" alto sound. Different from the sad results of pseudo-bossa albums by Gene Ammons, Sonny Rollins, and so many others, this is ...
Continue ReadingJazzed in the Mouse House
by Patrick Burnette
Jazz has gone some pretty wacky places--Russia, South America, the White House--but believe it or not, sometimes it even invades that princess-industrial complex we know and love as the Disney corporation. Listen and learn as Mike leads us deep into this heart of darkness and we see how a rainbow of different jazz artists come to terms with the musical productions of that most profit-driven rodent of them all. Playlist Discussion of Various Artist's album Jazz Loves Disney ...
Continue ReadingJazz Fest Deemed A Success (Three Years In A Row): A Look Back At The Virginia Beach Jazz Festival 1959-1961
by Troy Hoffman
They say that music is the “great communicator," and if so then jazz is the most fluent. Just a few miles away from the famous jazz club, The Jolly Roger, in Virginia Beach, the Robert E. Lee Amphitheater was newly built to seat 2,000 and was the location of the area's first Virginia Beach Jazz Festival on August 30, 1959. Leading up to opening day, promoters had multiple concerns for the concert's success, both financial and social. With a lot ...
Continue ReadingDave Brubeck: A Dave Brubeck Christmas
by Mark Sullivan
This was Dave Brubeck's fourth album of unaccompanied solo piano, originally released on Telarc in 1996. As the title implies, Brubeck Plays Brubeck (Columbia, 1956) was devoted to original music and sketches. But all of the others mainly featured the pianist interpreting other people's compositions; in this case, mainly brief treatments of traditional Christmas music and popular standards. Brubeck was after a particular atmosphere: his liner notes describe music as an essential part of Christmas celebrations in his family, with ...
Continue ReadingThe Dave Brubeck Quartet: The Dave Brubeck Quartet, Live From The Northwest, 1959
by Mike Jurkovic
Like Elemental Music's previously unheard Bill Evans' set, Tales: Live in Copenhagen (1964), The Dave Brubeck Quartet,?Live From The Northwest, 1959 may not hold the historical weight of other posthumous Brubeck releases, but it certainly displays the effortless virtuosity and invention the quartet brought to every gig, large or small, far and wide and in-between. Just months before Brubeck, alto saxophonist?Paul Desmond, bassist?Eugene Wright,?and drummer?Joe Morello would set the music world alight with Time Out (Columbia, 1959), Wally ...
Continue ReadingDave Brubeck: A Dave Brubeck Christmas
by Richard J Salvucci
As the end of the year Holidays draw near, it is difficult to avoid a certain cynicism about seasonal music. Take Christmas albums. Some artists have multiple efforts. It is a virtual guarantee that someone at random--say Ferlin Husky--has a Christmas album. A risk-taker could probably safely win a blind wager, because, well, everyone has one. It would take far too much space and patience to provide a sample. Besides, this is about Dave Brubeck. Honestly, some listeners ...
Continue ReadingBrubeck In '59 And Some Brand New Jazz Releases
by Bob Osborne
On this show we feature new new releases from Dave Brubeck, Voodoo Drummer, Matías Formica, Art Hirahara, John Herberman, Ivo Perelman, Susan Alcorn, Afro Peruvian New Trends Orchestra, Barry Deister, Constantine Alexander, and, Laurent Estoppey with Daniel Levin.Playlist Show Intro 00:00 The Dave Brubeck Quartet “Basin Street Blues" from Live from the Northwest, 1959 (Brubeck Editions) 00:54 Voodoo Drummer “Gnossienne No 1/Milo mou kokkino" from Erik Satie in 7/8 + Milo mou kokkino (Self Released) 07:42 Matías Formica ...
Continue ReadingDave Brubeck: Live From the Northwest, 1959
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
Last week, I pulled a new album loose from an envelope and the first thought I had was, “Goodness, do we really need another live album from the Dave Brubeck Quartet?" The track list wasn't much help selling me on giving the CD a listen, with songs like When the Saints Go Marching In and The Lonesome Road. But because I spent an afternoon with Dave at his home this time of year back in 2010 and because Lydia Liebman ...
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Jazz Musician of the Day: Dave Brubeck
Source:
Michael Ricci
All About Jazz is celebrating Dave Brubeck's birthday today!
Brubeck's mother studied piano in England and intended to become a concert pianist; at home she taught piano for extra money. Brubeck was not particularly interested in learning by any particular method, but preferred to create his own melodies, and therefore avoided learning to read sheet music. In college Brubeck was nearly expelled when one of his professors discovered that he could not read sheet music. Several of his professors came ...
read more
Jazz Musician of the Day: Dave Brubeck
Source:
Michael Ricci
All About Jazz is celebrating Dave Brubeck's birthday today!
Brubeck's mother studied piano in England and intended to become a concert pianist; at home she taught piano for extra money. Brubeck was not particularly interested in learning by any particular method, but preferred to create his own melodies, and therefore avoided learning to read sheet music. In college Brubeck was nearly expelled when one of his professors discovered that he could not read sheet music. Several of his professors came ...
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Dave Brubeck and Mort Sahl
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
Mort Sahl, a Canadian-born American comedian who helped pioneer socio-political satire in the 1950s and '60s, died on October 26. He was 94. For a brief moment in 1958, he hosted a pilot for a local San Franciso TV jazz show called Jam Session. He wasn't the show's planned host but he agreed to sit in. And why not? The group featured live at the Black Hawk was the Dave Brubeck Quartet. What's special about the following clip is the ...
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Jazz Musician of the Day: Dave Brubeck
Source:
Michael Ricci
All About Jazz is celebrating Dave Brubeck's birthday today!
Brubeck's mother studied piano in England and intended to become a concert pianist; at home she taught piano for extra money. Brubeck was not particularly interested in learning by any particular method, but preferred to create his own melodies, and therefore avoided learning to read sheet music. In college Brubeck was nearly expelled when one of his professors discovered that he could not read sheet music. Several of his professors came ...
read more
Dave Brubeck: Lullabies
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
The warmest and most relaxing holiday album of the season isn't a holiday album at all. It's a new release from the late Dave Brubeck called Lullabies (Verve). The 15 previously unreleased piano solos were recorded in March 2010 as a gift to his grandchildren, and the standards and originals would become his last studio recording. Dave died in 2012. I last saw Dave in December 2010, when I visited Dave and his wife, Iola, for a Wall Street Journal ...
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Jazz Musician of the Day: Dave Brubeck
Source:
Michael Ricci
All About Jazz is celebrating Dave Brubeck's birthday today!
Brubeck\'s mother studied piano in England and intended to become a concert pianist; at home she taught piano for extra money. Brubeck was not particularly interested in learning by any particular method, but preferred to create his own melodies, and therefore avoided learning to read sheet music. In college Brubeck was nearly expelled when one of his professors discovered that he could not read sheet music... Read more.
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David Brubeck Trio: 1949-'50
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
In 1950, New York had the George Shearing Quintet, a group that Shearing harmonized by combining the voicing of the Glenn Miller Orchestra and the block-chords piano style of Milt Buckner. In San Francisco, the Dave Brubeck Trio was equally delicious to the ear. The trio consisted of Dave Brubeck (piano), Ron Crotty (bass) and Cal Tjader (drums, bongo, conga and vibes). Thanks to Tjader's versatility on percussion instrument, particularly the vibes, the trio sounded more like a quintet. While ...
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Jazz Musician of the Day: Dave Brubeck
Source:
Michael Ricci
All About Jazz is celebrating Dave Brubeck's birthday today!
Brubeck\'s mother studied piano in England and intended to become a concert pianist; at home she taught piano for extra money. Brubeck was not particularly interested in learning by any particular method, but preferred to create his own melodies, and therefore avoided learning to read sheet music. In college Brubeck was nearly expelled when one of his professors discovered that he could not read sheet music... Read more.
Place our Musician ...
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Beverley Thorne (1924-2017)
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
Beverley “David" Thorne, the last of the Case Study architects and the designer of Dave and Iola Brubeck's modernist California and Connecticut homes, died December 6 in Sonoma, Calif. He was 93. Bev's death was confirmed yesterday by architect, colleague and long-time friend Paul Wood, who said from France that Bev was admitted to the hospital in Sonoma last week with pneumonia. View Bev Thorne's architectural designs here. I knew Bev through Paul, and I exchanged emails routinely with Bev ...
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Dave Brubeck
Instrument: Piano
Born: December 6, 1920
Died: December 5, 2012
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