Dave Brubeck: A Life in Time

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These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc. Blocks of harmony passing between the brass and the saxophones, that was how arrangers tended to think, and i loved those arrangements. The author is clearly a genuine fan and deeply knowledgeable of all of Brubecks music over the years and with this in mind be warned! You think of Beethoven, or Stravinsky, he'd say, they are always leading you somewhere new, and for that to happen you need to move between keys. Something that was obvious was the author’s dedication to presenting an excellent and thorough presentation of the life and works of Dave Brubeck, but unfortunately I was unable to maintain interest for more than a chapter or two at a time as a result of what I’ve mentioned that seemed to get in the way of enjoying this book as much as I’d hoped to.

I suppose that for some readers this will be very simple and an excellent narrative, but I can't see it myself. Time Out may be what Brubeck (1920-2012) is known for, but, as Philip Clark reveals in Dave Brubeck: A Life in Time , it is merely the highlight of his long career as a composer, pianist and bandleader.Clark puts Brubeck’s music in its proper context, the stride piano and boogie-woogie influences as well as the counterpoint and polytonality (via his studies with composer Darius Milhaud, who also taught Burt Bacharach, among many others). Hopefully these quotes give an idea of the intense, well informed discussion that Philip Clark presents.

However after reading the biography especially regarding polytonality and polyrhythms both of which I was aware of, I felt the need to actually listen to the particular piece of music that he was talking about to totally understand what he was referring to. But finding a convincing fit for Brubeck's legacy, one that reconciles his mass popularity with his advanced musical technique, has proved largely elusive. But in bar 8 a sudden jolt-at exactly the midpoint of his sixteen bar structure- as this most minor of melodies was parked on a major chord; and when the melody repeated, it rebounded from this correspondingly distant vantage point, far outside F minor.

we feel the grain and texture and historical weight of single moments, but only because we also understand the larger picture.

The emphasis on the technical side of Brubeck's music, and on Brubeck's impact on rock and other nonjazz music, is thought provoking. By the dawn of the 1960s, when “Take Five”, a catchy little number in 5/4 time, was high in the pop charts, regularly requested on the BBC’s Sunday lunchtime radio show Two-Way Family Favourites, he was effectively the public face of modern jazz, even though his genial temperament and settled family life – he was married to the same woman for 70 years – ran contrary to what was generally seen as the idiom’s beatnik tendency. Unlike many jazz musicians, he was a student of modern music pioneer Darius Milhaud and his compositions and playing always had one foot in the realm of modernism, with its polytonality. Brubeck opened up as never before, disclosing his unique approach to jazz; the heady days of his ‘classic’ quartet in the 1950s-60s; hanging out with Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong, and Miles Davis; and the many controversies that had dogged his 66-year-long career.

I wish I had been able to have a real conversation with them; they were very nice, but I was so excited, I could barely speak. A LIFE IN TIME includes in-depth analyses of Brubeck’s music; and I have to confess that much of the technical terminology used by the author is beyond my understanding (and possibly resulting from my lack of a formal education in theory of music).