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
We don't know the power that's within our own bodies
I wasn't allowed to play in some universities in the United States and out of twenty-five concerts, twenty-three were canceled unless I would substitute my black bass player for my old white bass player, which I wouldn't do.
Jazz is about the only form of art existing today in which there is freedom of the individual without the loss of group contact.
It's like a whole orchestra, the piano for me.
Damn it, when I'm bombastic, I have my reasons. I want to be bombastic-take it or leave it.
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.
There's a way of playing safe, there's a way of using tricks and there's the way I like to play which is dangerously where you're going to take a chance on making mistakes in order to create something you haven't created before.
One of the reasons I believe in jazz is that the oneness of man can come through the rhythm of your heart. It’s the same anyplace in the world, that heartbeat. It’s the first thing you hear when you’re born — or before you’re born — and it’s the last thing you hear.
The Pacific Mozart Chorale in Berkeley asked four different composers (the other three are John Adams, Meredith Monk and David Lang) to fill in what Mozart left out,
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.
On my way out here, I was writing all the way on the plane, ... and as soon as I got to San Diego, I arranged with the symphony to find an old practice room in their basement. It's better than two-thirds completed. I'd say four-fifths.
My dad was the manager at the 45,000-acre ranch, but he owned his own 1,200-acre ranch, and I owned four cattle that he gave to me when I graduated from grammar school, from the eighth grade. And those cows multiplied, and he kept track of them for years for me. And that was my herd.
It has taken me almost 60 years finally to compose something I wanted to write when I was a young soldier in Europe.
Take Five. There's a certain piece that if we don't play, we're in trouble.