Dave Brubeck
Dave Brubeck
David Warren "Dave" Brubeckwas an American jazz pianist and composer, considered to be one of the foremost exponents of cool jazz. He wrote a number of jazz standards, including "In Your Own Sweet Way" and "The Duke". Brubeck's style ranged from refined to bombastic, reflecting his mother's attempts at classical training and his improvisational skills. His music is known for employing unusual time signatures, and superimposing contrasting rhythms, meters, and tonalities...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPianist
Date of Birth6 December 1920
CityConcord, CA
CountryUnited States of America
Most of the international acceptance of jazz education can be traced to the University of North Texas, Denton, Texas, and the wonderful program they inaugurated.
I knew even if I'm a cowboy, I'm going to be involved in jazz in some way.
Don't be a perfectionist... leave that to the classical musicians.
Jazz stands for freedom.
My own Brubeck Institute in California is turning out fantastic young jazz players, and I know great things will happen.
The worst thing about the life of a jazz musician on the road is getting to the gig. Once you're there and playing, it's marvelous.
Jazz is about freedom within discipline.
It's like a whole orchestra, the piano for me.
Jazz stands for freedom. It's supposed to be the voice of freedom: Get out there and improvise, and take chances, and don't be a perfectionist - leave that to the classical musicians.
I was young, too, ... It was new for both of us.
When you start out with goals - mine were to play polytonally and polyrhythmically - you never exhaust that. I started doing that in the 1940s. It's still a challenge to discover what can be done with just those two elements.
That's the beauty of music. You can take a theme from a Bach sacred chorale and improvise. It doesn't make any difference where the theme comes from; the treatment of it can be jazz.
Take Five. There's a certain piece that if we don't play, we're in trouble.
We immediately gelled and we both were hearing things together and feeling the beat together. We both had a wonderful ball ... it was a fun, enjoyable musical experience.