Striking Brubeck piece

[Larry Kart]

(or so I think) from the 1998 album "So What's New?" (Telarc):

 

[JSngry]

That's a nice tune.

Spend some good time last week checking out Brubeck Plays Brubeck, a not particularly celebrated 1956 solo album on Columbia. I was pleasantly surprised by it, both the tunes (which include first or near-first recordings of "The Duke" and "In Your Own Sweet Way") and the playing, which was very reflective, almost introspective.

This Brubeck guy...he does the one thing...except when he doesn't. I keep finding exceptions to the rule, start to think that maybe it's the rule that is actually the exception, and then, nah, they're the rule alright, but damn, you can go through a lot of Brubeck and get plenty of pleasant surprises, like this one here from later on, or from that solo album from fairly early on.

[AllenLowe]

now that is a beautiful piece. Shows what can happen when he just.....plays.

[duaneiac]

There are a lot of good and probably, for most people, surprising, musical moments to be found in Dave Brubeck's later Concord and Telarc recordings.  I think toomany people figure they "know" all about Dave Brubeck after hearing "Take Five", "Blue Rondo a la Turk", "The Duke" and maybe "In Your Own Sweet Way", the basic "hits" of the classic DBQ.  People who listen to his piano work in the classic DBQ seem to think that that was all he could do.  On the contrary, that style of playing was an artistic choice of his; whether one likes that choice or not is another matter, but it should be accepted that he played that way by choice, not because of some greater lack of musical ability or sophistication.  My guess is that once he found the ideal playing partner in Paul Desmond, he realized that Mr. Desmond would always be there to handle the gorgeous lyrical aspect of a song, so why should the pianist duplicate that lyrical mood?  Better to have a strong musical contrast between the two lead voices in the group, mixing Mr. Desmond's lyricism with Mr. Brubeck's more robust approach to produce a kind of "sweet and sour" musical fare.

In later years, when he reformed the DBQ with new musicians, Mr. Brubeck's playing changed, especially in the long-running group that included Bobby Militello, whose style of playing was quite different from Mr. Desmond's.  Mr. Militello's playing had a more vigorous bebop-rooted sound, and in contrast, Mr. Brubeck's playing became more lyrical in those years.  This is the version of the DBQ that I got to see several times and in each concert there were moments of sheer beauty in Mr. Brubeck's playing.  I recall one concert I saw in Santa Cruz, when Mr. Brubeck recalled to the audience that he used to help his rancher father bring cattle down to the fair at the Santa Cruz County fairgrounds when he was a boy.  This led him to think of a song from those long gone days and he said he wanted to play it even though the band had never played it before and didn't even know what song he was talking about.  He would just start playing and he said the band should jump in when they wanted.  So he started playing "Memories Of You" and I think the drummer Randy Jones played a few bars on brushes before he dropped out and joined his bandmates and the rest of the audience in enjoying this very lovely and poignant piece of music.

There is a lot of good music to be found on the solo recordings he made for Telarc in the late 1990's and 2000's.  even his Christmas album, which is a solo piano affair, has some wonderful playing (if one likes holiday music).  As far as I am concerned, there is a whole lot more "there" there than people generally give him credit for.

[medjuck]

Yes. I saw Brubeck in concert  a couple of years before he died  and his piano playing was quit different than what I had heard  on his records and when I first saw him more than 50 years ago.  Even when he played Take Five (as I guess he had to do in every concert) he sounded more a generic jazz pianist and lest distinctive  than he had  earlier.  I certainly don't mean that as an insult-- I liked his later playing a lot  but I probably wouldn't have been able to identify him in a blindfold test.  Earlier Brubeck was always identifiable even if I didn't always like it.  And Jim is right :  Brubeck Plays Brubeck is a great record.  

[AllenLowe]

funny because I saw Brubeck at Newport - late 90s, maybe - with Militello, and Brubeck just did his regular thing. As with OP,  it drove me nuts.

[JSngry]

Not to compare the actual results as much as the thought process...it's interesting how Brubeck was doing cross-meters (not odd meters, cross meters, like playing three over 4 and then breaking that 3 into something else inside the 3 over 4),  a while before the Miles/Herbie/Tony/Ron thing really took route. Brubeck was really adept at that pretty early on, as well as doing it with altered changes, somehow it all came out in the end. And it seems that he had very few actual "routines", so it wasn't going to be the same thing every night, not exactly.

Of course, a lot of times he was subtle as a hurled rock about it, but still, I've come to say, yeah, subtlety is one thing, mathematical thought process is another, and when they overlap, great, and when they don't, hey, there are no guarantees in life.

The man was indeed quirky, but as with all quirky people, there's never going to be a point where you can engage with them and not have those puzzling moments, just there will never be a time when yo can let your guard down and think that the quirks have finally disappeared. The charm of the irrevocably imperfect and perpetually flawed.

[Hot Ptah]

I saw Brubeck live several times in the 1990s and 2000s, and was impressed with his lyricism, and at times, his lightly swinging touch. As others have noted here, his playing had more variety than he is often given credit for.