Dave Brubeck: A Life in Time

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Some of the data that are collected include the number of visitors, their source, and the pages they visit anonymously. The late Whitney Balliett of the New Yorker mastered the difficult skill of bringing an improvisation to life in the mind’s ear, largely by avoiding the use of technical terms.

At Mills College: In terms of the octet, the most important thing Milhaud taught us all- and you can hear it in the records-was about counterpoint, which helped us create our own sound. Clark compiled much of the information that makes up this book from interviews with Brubeck while traveling with Dave, his wife, and the band he was playing with later in his life and career. By keeping the music at the centre, and interweaving the background of cultural, political and social change to illuminate the development of the music, Clark gives us a complete picture of the artist's life and work. Quite a bit about Dave's early experience of Milhaud, Stravinsky, Bartok and Schonberg (all of who settled in the USA from 1940 onwards), and the effect this had on steering Dave away from the 1950s prevailing bebop (with its characteristic fast, busy and intricate improvisation on melody and chord progressions) towards a sort of cool approach, with the soloist improvising strongly on key changes (discusses Dave insisting on the Bass player staying in a constant key). I am only half way through the book and am looking forward to continuing and finishing it, which might take some time, as there is so much more information to absorb.Tutored also by his mother (Bessie) who was fairly well down the path of a concert pianist career - her hopes dashed by her rancher husband moving the family to run a cattle ranch in remote Ione (Sacremento). In the decades that followed, Brubeck remained the focus of controversy, even as his quartet’s albums – with their abstract-expressionist cover art by Joan Miró, Franz Kline and Sam Francis – became almost as ubiquitous a fixture in the homes of the upwardly mobile as a hostess trolley or coffee percolator. But because counterpoint was so important to the way he thought, we all latched on to that and it became important to us. we feel the grain and texture and historical weight of single moments, but only because we also understand the larger picture. 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.

In 1954 the pianist Dave Brubeck became the first jazz musician of the postwar generation to be featured on the cover of Time magazine, infuriating those who felt that this white middle-class Californian had no business taking the limelight from Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie or Thelonious Monk, the true pioneers of an essentially African American music. Although I am not a musician and much of the technical discussion of Brubeck's music flew over my head, I enjoyed reading this book immensely. Not during my 80+ years, in more than 70 years as a serious jazz player and listener, have I read such an incisive and entertaining book about a jazz landmark such as Dave Brubeck, and his band members.The book’s discussion of Brubeck’s playing and composition styles is perceptive, showing just how different his approach was from peers like Bill Evans, Lennie Tristano, Thelonious Monk, etc. In Dave Brubeck: A Life in Time, Clark provides us with a thoughtful, thorough, and long-overdue biography of an extraordinary man whose influence continues to inform and inspire musicians today. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.