An Evening At The Rochester International Jazz Festival a.k.a Brubeck In Concert
In case you did not immediately recognize the pictorial glyph above, that was the introductory liner note for Take 5, unarguably Dave Brubeck Quartet’s most famous and signature jazz tune, written by Mr. Brubeck’s long time musical cohort and alto saxophonist Paul Desmond. Nandita and I went to a couple of jazz concerts this week, part of the annual Rochester International Jazz festival that featured amongst others Sonny Rollins, Chaka Khan and Chick Corea (who we saw perform Tuesday with his current band, Touchstone).
Last night, we attended a headliner performance by The Dave Brubeck Quartet at the Eastman Theater that started 8.00 PM sharp with Mr. Brubeck taking centre stage and accompanied by alto saxophonist Bobby Militello, bassist Michael Moore and drummer Randy Jones. Mr. Brubeck, all of 85-years, belied all signs of frailty as he started playing to a standing ovation.
Dave Brubeck has deservedly earned the respect of many of his peers including the legendary Miles Davis and Charles Mingus for his unique piano style and songwriting abilities. Sadly, for the better part of his career, the elitist jazz snobs were less kind about his style and music. I personally think they resented the fact that he successfully took jazz from the night clubs to the college campuses as well as adopted an avant garde structure in most of his compositions. Singularly credited with establishing a number of jazz standards, including “In Your Own Sweet Way” and “The Duke”, his music makes use of unusual time signatures (a time signature is a notational device used in western musical notation to specify how many beats are in each bar and which note value i.e. minim, crotchet, quaver, etc constitutes one beat). Another signature tune, Blue Rondo A La Turk, which is a play on Mozart’s “Rondo alla Turca”, is written in the 9/8 signature of traditional Turkish music, the country the Quartet was touring in when the tune was written. Brubeck was featured on the cover of Time magazine in 1954, the first jazz musician to be so honored.
Post that quick infomercial on Brubeck, let me return to the concert itself. The Quartet performed several pieces including Pennies From Heaven and a new release called London Flat London Sharp. Only, this time round, all performances were quite unlike any studio version of these tunes, more of the long slow outtakes type. All 4 players simply “experimented” with their instruments. I was blown away by Bobby Militello’s virtuosity with the saxaphone as well as Randy Jones dexterity on the drums – some of the rolls performed were simply too-three-fifty much. Mr. Brubeck punctuated the music with anecdotal references on the history of the tunes themselves. Interestingly, London Flat London Sharp was a tune written on their recent tour of England. The producer/agent who wanted Brubeck to tour and play in what was presumably archetypal beastly English weather apparently told Brubeck that for the Quartet’s troubles they would be put up in a flat in London, to which Brubeck’s response was “Sharp” (errr… for my friends this side of the Atlantic and not quite familiar, “flat” means “apartment” and “sharp” means “cool”).
Last tune for the evening was Take 5, only I’d like to call it the Take 5 Slow Jam. Post the introductory notes, each member of the Quartet played solo the tune itself before coming back together for a grand finale of this timeless classic – all in all, a good 15-17 drawn out minutes of incredible music. Folks, if you have never heard Dave Brubeck or his music ever before, just do yourself a small favor and hear this one tune… It will do you a world of good!!!
Mr. Brubeck finished the evening with another interesting anecdote. Rayburn Wright, one-time director of the Eastman Jazz Ensemble in Rochester encouraged Brubeck to write a tune for orchestra, something he hadn’t done before. Brubeck gave it a try and unenthusiastically sent the first piece of his composition to Wright. Wright replied that he did not want to touch or alter any of the score and had Brubeck finish the entire composition single-handedly. That composition for orchestra called Elementals was performed for the first time ever at the Eastman Theater in 1963 by a 45 member orchestra directed by Wright. Nice!!!
Ok, I need to run now. Next up, is John Scofield, performing on Saturday. He mixes bebop, R&B and blues seamlessly with jazz… I’ve heard him before on a couple of collaborative works with none other than Miles Davis… Will keep y’all posted…
Peace
S