Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra
with
the Dave Brubeck Quartet
Keith Lockhart conducting
live at Symphony Hall
Boston, Massachusetts USA
June 01, 2010
recorded for broadcast on
June 19, 2010
on WCRB-FM Boston/National Public Radio
* incomplete broadcast


Program:
"A Library of Congress �Living Legend,� 90-years-young pianist Dave Brubeck proves jazz is the fountain of youth, as he performs with his quartet to orchestral arrangements of �A Salute to The Count � The Basie Band Is Back in Town� and other compositions. The program also features the fiftieth anniversary of the chart-topping �Take Five,� performed by The Dave Brubeck Quartet on their 1959 album "Time Out", which remains one of the best known jazz standards ever." - bso.org

* Note: My recording of most of the first hour of this broadcast - mostly the usual Pops fare [movie themes by John Williams, some light classical pieces etc.] was ruined by radio reception problems, but I was able to record the entire second set including the Dave Brubeck Quartet with few if any problems. I'm including two clean tracks from the first set and the standard Boston Pops concert closer, Sousa's "Stars and Stripes Forever," as filler [tracks 13-19].


The Dave Brubeck Quartet:
Dave Brubeck: piano
Bobby Militello: alto sax and flute
Michael Moore: bass
Randy Jones: drums


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tracklisting:

Boston Pops Orchestra with the Dave Brubeck Quartet
101 radio intro A 0:42
102 radio intro B 2:54
103 Keith's intro for Dave Brubeck 1:02
104 Summer Music - Brubeck 6:25
105 Keith's intro 0:29
106 Basie's Band is Back in Town - Brubeck 7:35
107 Keith's intro 0:26
108 Lullaby from "La Fiesta Posada" - Brubeck 5:57
109 Keith's intro 2:18
110 Blue Rondo a la Turk - Brubeck 10:54
111 Take Five - Paul Desmond 6:39
112 radio outro 0:57
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Boston Pops Orchestra featuring Bonnie Buick, violin
[from the first set of this concert]
113 Keith's intro 2:18
114 Skylark - Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer; arranged by Don Sibesky 4:56
115 radio intro 0:18
116 Sweet Georgia Brown - music by Ben Bernie and Maceo Pinkard, lyrics by Kenneth Casey (1925); arranged by Don Sibesky 4:13
117 radio outro 0:08
[concert closing piece:]
118 Stars and Stripes Forever - John Philip Sousa 3:38
119 radio outro 1:15

total time: 63:16 minutes
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Source/lineage:
FM stereo radio>PC>Soundforge>WAV>tracked, edited and EQ'd in Soundforge>WAVs>SBEs repaired, checksum and FLAC-8 files created in Trader's Little Helper

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Standard disclaimer: This was recorded from an analog FM broadcast. There may be audible FM hiss and other flaws.
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more info:
http://www.davebrubeck.com/live/
Dave Brubeck Institute:
http://web.pacific.edu/x19959.xml
http://library.pacific.edu/ha/brubeck/index.asp
Brubeck discography project:
http://www.jazzdisco.org/dave-brubeck/
a recent review:
http://notesonjazz.blogspot.com/2010/12/review-of-dave-brubeck-quartet-concert.html
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A Zootype project, June, 2010 - January 2011
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Dave Brubeck
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
David Warren "Dave" Brubeck (born December 6, 1920) is an American jazz pianist. He has written a number of jazz standards, including "In Your Own Sweet Way" and "The Duke". Brubeck's style ranges 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.

His long-time musical partner, alto saxophonist Paul Desmond, wrote the Dave Brubeck Quartet's best remembered piece, "Take Five", which is in 5/4 time and has endured as a jazz classic on the top-selling jazz album, "Time Out". Brubeck experimented with time signatures throughout his career, recording "Pick Up Sticks" in 6/4, "Unsquare Dance" in 7/4, and "Blue Rondo � la Turk" in 9/8. He is also a respected composer of orchestral and sacred music, and wrote soundtracks for television such as "Mr. Broadway" and the animated mini-series "This Is America, Charlie Brown".
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Early life.

Brubeck was born in Concord, California and grew up in Ione. His father, Howard "Pete" Brubeck, was a cattle rancher, and his mother, Elizabeth (n�e Ivey), who had studied piano in England under Myra Hess and intended to become a concert pianist, taught piano for extra money. Brubeck originally did not intend to become a musician (his two older brothers, Henry and Howard, were already on that track), but took lessons from his mother. He could not read sheet music during these early lessons, attributing this difficulty to poor eyesight, but "faked" his way through, well enough that this deficiency went mostly unnoticed.

Intending to work with his father on their ranch, Brubeck entered the College of the Pacific (now the University of the Pacific) studying veterinary science, but transferred on the urging of the head of zoology, Dr Arnold, who told him "Brubeck, your mind's not here. It's across the lawn in the conservatory. Please go there. Stop wasting my time and yours." Later, Brubeck was nearly expelled when one of his professors discovered that he could not read music. Several of his professors came forward, arguing that his ability with counterpoint and harmony more than compensated. The college was still afraid that it would cause a scandal, and agreed to let Brubeck graduate only after he promised never to teach piano.

After graduating in 1942, Brubeck was drafted into the army and served overseas in George Patton's Third Army. He was spared from service in the Battle of the Bulge when he volunteered to play piano at a Red Cross show; he was such a hit he was ordered to form a band. Thus he created one of the U.S. armed forces' first racially integrated bands, "The Wolfpack". While serving, Brubeck met Paul Desmond in early 1944. He returned to college after serving nearly four years in the army, this time attending Mills College and studying under Darius Milhaud, who encouraged him to study fugue and orchestration, but not classical piano. While on active duty, he received two lessons from Arnold Schoenberg at UCLA in an attempt to connect with High Modernism theory and practice. However, the encounter did not end on good terms since Schoenberg believed that every note should be accounted for, an approach which Brubeck could not accept.

After completing his studies under Milhaud, Brubeck helped to establish Berkeley, California's Fantasy Records. He worked with an octet (the recording bears his name only because Brubeck was the best-known member at the time), and a trio including Cal Tjader and Ron Crotty. Highly experimental, the group made few recordings and got even fewer paying jobs. The trio was often joined by Paul Desmond on the bandstand, at Desmond's prodding.
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Quartet era.

Following a near-fatal swimming accident which incapacitated him for several months, Brubeck organized The Dave Brubeck Quartet in 1951, with Paul Desmond on saxophone. They took up a long residency at San Francisco's Black Hawk nightclub and gained great popularity touring college campuses, recording a series of albums with such titles as "Jazz at Oberlin" (1953), "Jazz at College of the Pacific" (1953), and Brubeck's debut on Columbia Records, "Jazz Goes to College" (1954). In that same year, he was featured on the cover of Time magazine, the second jazz musician to be so honored (the first was Louis Armstrong on February 21, 1949.)

Early bassists for the group included Ron Crotty, Bob Bates, and Bob's brother Norman Bates; Lloyd Davis and Joe Dodge held the drum chair. In 1956, Brubeck hired Joe Morello, who had been working with Marian McPartland; Morello's presence made possible the rhythmic experiments that were to come. In 1958 Eugene Wright joined for the group's U.S. State Department tour of Europe and Asia; Wright would become a permanent member in 1959, making the "classic" Quartet's personnel complete.

Wright is African-American; in the late 1950s and early 1960s Brubeck canceled several concerts because the club owners or hall managers resisted the idea of an integrated band on their stages. He also canceled a television appearance when he found out that the producers intended to keep Wright off-camera.

In 1959, the Dave Brubeck Quartet recorded "Time Out", an album their label was enthusiastic about but nonetheless hesitant to release. Featuring the album art of S. Neil Fujita, the album contained all original compositions, almost none of which were in common time: 9/8, 5/4, 3/4, and 6/4 were used. Nonetheless, on the strength of these unusual time signatures (the album included "Take Five", "Blue Rondo � la Turk", and "Three To Get Ready"), it quickly went platinum.

"Time Out" was followed by several albums with a similar approach, including "Time Further Out: Miro Reflections" (1961), using more 5/4, 6/4, and 9/8, plus the first attempt at 7/4; "Countdown: Time in Outer Space" (dedicated to John Glenn) (1962), featuring 11/4 and more 7/4; and "Time Changes" (1963), with much 3/4, 10/4 (which was really 5+5), and 13/4. These albums were also known for using contemporary paintings as cover art, featuring the work of Joan Mir� on "Time Further Out", Franz Kline on "Time in Outer Space", and Sam Francis on "Time Changes".

A high point for the group was their 1963 live album At Carnegie Hall, described by critic Richard Palmer as "arguably Dave Brubeck's greatest concert".

In the early '60s, Brubeck and his wife Iola developed a jazz musical, "The Real Ambassadors", based in part on experiences they and their colleagues had during foreign tours on behalf of the U.S. State Department. The soundtrack album, which featured Louis Armstrong, Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, and Carmen McRae was recorded in 1961; the musical itself was performed at the 1962 Monterey Jazz Festival.

At their peak in the early '60s, the Brubeck Quartet was releasing as many as four albums a year. Apart from the 'College' and the 'Time' series, Brubeck recorded four LPs featuring his compositions based on the group's travels, and the local music they encountered. "Jazz Impressions of the USA" (1956, Morello's debut with the group), "Jazz Impressions of Eurasia" (1958), "Jazz Impressions of Japan" (1964), and "Jazz Impressions of New York" (1964) are less well-known albums, but all are brilliant examples of the quartet's studio work, and they produced Brubeck standards such as "Summer Song," "Brandenburg Gate," "Koto Song," and "Theme From Mr. Broadway." (Brubeck wrote, and the Quartet performed, the theme song for the Craig Stevens CBS drama series; the music from the series became material for the "New York" album.)

In 1961 Dave Brubeck appeared in a few scenes of the British Jazz/Beat film "All Night Long", which starred Patrick McGoohan and Richard Attenborough. Brubeck merely plays himself, and his piano playing includes closeups of his fingerings. Brubeck performs "It's a Raggy Waltz" from the "Time Further Out" album and duets briefly with bassist Charles Mingus in "Non-Sectarian Blues".

In the early 1960s Dave Brubeck was the program director of WJZZ-FM radio (now WEZN). He achieved his vision of an all jazz format radio station along with his friend and neighbor John E. Metts, one of the first African Americans in senior radio management.

The final studio album for Columbia by the Desmond/Wright/Morello quartet was "Anything Goes" (1966) featuring Cole Porter songs. A few concert recordings followed, and "The Last Time We Saw Paris" (1967) was the "Classic" Quartet's swansong.
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Later career.

Brubeck's disbanding of the Quartet at the end of 1967 allowed him more time to compose the longer, extended orchestral and choral works that were occupying his attention (to say nothing of Brubeck's desire to spend more time with his family). February 1968 saw the premiere of "The Light in the Wilderness" for baritone solo, choir, organ, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra conducted by Erich Kunzel, and Brubeck improvising on certain themes within. The piece is an oratorio on Jesus's teachings. The next year, Brubeck produced "The Gates of Justice", a cantata mixing Biblical scripture with the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr..

Further works followed, including the 1971 cantata "Truth Is Fallen" (now re-issued on CD by Collectables Records), written in protest of the Vietnam War, and also dedicated to the memory of the Kent State shootings and Jackson State killings of May 1970. The work was premiered in Midland, Michigan on May 1, 1971 and released on LP in 1972.

Brubeck's jazz playing did not cease. He was quickly prevailed upon by Newport Jazz Festival producer George Wein to tour with Gerry Mulligan. A Brubeck "Trio" was soon formed: Jack Six on bass, and Alan Dawson on drums. From 1968 until 1973, The Dave Brubeck Trio featuring Gerry Mulligan performed extensively, releasing several concert albums (including one with guest Paul Desmond) and one studio album.

In 1973 Brubeck formed another group with three of his sons, Darius on keyboards, Dan on drums, and Chris on electric bass or bass trombone. This group often included Perry Robinson, clarinet, and Jerry Bergonzi, saxophone. Brubeck would record and tour with this "Two Generations of Brubeck" group until 1978.

Brubeck and Desmond recorded an album of duets in 1975, then the Classic Quartet reassembled for a 25th anniversary reunion in 1976. Paul Desmond died in 1977.

Brubeck's Quartet has remained vital, a primary creative outlet for the pianist. Bergonzi became a member and remained with the band until 1982. This version featured Chris Brubeck, and Randy Jones on drums. Jones joined in 1979 and is still with the band after over 30 years. Replacing Bergonzi was Brubeck's old friend Bill Smith, who knew Brubeck at Mills College and was a member of Brubeck's Octet in the late 1940s; he remained in the group through the '80s and recorded with it off and on until 1995. The best recording of this Smith/Brubeck/Jones Quartet is probably their remarkable "Moscow Night" concert of 1987, released on Concord Records.

The Quartet currently [as of 2010] includes alto saxophonist and flautist Bobby Militello, bassist Michael Moore (who replaced Alec Dankworth), and Randy Jones.

In 1994, Brubeck was inducted into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame.

Brubeck continues to write new works, including orchestral and ballet scores. He has worked extensively with the London Symphony Orchestra and tours about 80 cities each year.

At the 49th Monterey Jazz Festival in September 2006, Brubeck debuted his commissioned work, "Cannery Row Suite", a jazz opera drawn from the characters in John Steinbeck's American classic writing about Monterey's roots as a sardine fishing and packing town. Iola (n�e Whitlock), Brubeck's wife since 1942, is his personal secretary, manager and lyricist, and co-authored the "Cannery Row Suite" with Dave. His performance of this as well as a number of jazz standards with his current quartet was the buzz of the Festival (an event Brubeck helped launch in 1958).

Because of his advancing years, Brubeck's touring has naturally decreased in activity. He announced at the end of 2008 that he would no longer tour internationally.
On April 3, 2009, Brubeck was scheduled to play the album "Time Out" in its entirety to commemorate its 50th anniversary at the annual Brubeck Festival, but was not able to because of being in hospital with a viral infection. His son Darius filled in on piano with the rest of his quartet. A scheduled October, 2010 concert in St. Louis, MO was canceled after Brubeck's doctors advised against traveling and performing. He had a heart problem and was experiencing fatigue and dizziness. His doctors installed a pacemaker in his heart. His surgery was doing so well that his doctors said that he could resume his concert touring in November. He performed sold out shows at the Blue Note in New York City on Thanksgiving weekend, 2010, celebrating his 90th birthday.
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Personal life.

Four of Brubeck's six children are professional musicians. Darius, the eldest, is an accomplished pianist, producer, educator and performer. Dan is a renowned percussionist, Chris is a multi-instrumentalist and composer. Matthew, the youngest, is a versatile cellist with an impressive list of composing and performance credits. Brubeck's children often join with him in concerts and in the recording studio.

Brubeck believed what he saw during World War II contradicted the Ten Commandments, and the war evoked a spiritual awakening. He became a Catholic in 1980, shortly after completing the "Mass To Hope" which had been commissioned by Ed Murray, editor of the national Catholic weekly "Our Sunday Visitor". Although he had spiritual interests before that time, he said, "I didn't convert to Catholicism, because I wasn't anything to convert from. I just joined the Catholic Church." In 1996, he received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2006, Brubeck was awarded the University of Notre Dame's Laetare Medal, the oldest and most prestigious honor given to American Catholics, during the University's commencement. He performed "Travellin' Blues" for the graduating class of 2006.

Brubeck founded the Brubeck Institute with his wife Iola at their alma mater, the University of the Pacific in 2000. What began as a special archive, consisting of the personal document collection of the Brubecks has since expanded to provide fellowships and educational opportunities in jazz for students, also leading to having one of the main streets the school resides on named in his honor, Dave Brubeck Way.

On April 8, 2008, United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice presented Brubeck with a "Benjamin Franklin Award for Public Diplomacy" for offering an American "vision of hope, opportunity and freedom" through his music. "As a little girl I grew up on the sounds of Dave Brubeck because my dad was your biggest fan," said Rice. The State Department said in a statement that "as a pianist, composer, cultural emissary and educator, Dave Brubeck's life's work exemplifies the best of America's cultural diplomacy." At the ceremony Brubeck played a brief recital for the audience at the State Department. "I want to thank all of you because this honor is something that I never expected. Now I am going to play a cold piano with cold hands," Brubeck stated.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver announced on May 28, 2008 that Brubeck would be inducted into the California Hall of Fame, located at The California Museum for History, Women and the Arts. The induction ceremony occurred December 10, and he was inducted alongside eleven other legendary Californians.

In September 2009, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts announced Brubeck as an Kennedy Center Honoree for exhibiting excellence in performance arts. The Kennedy Center Honors Gala took place on Sunday, December 6 (Brubeck's 89th birthday) and was broadcast nationwide on CBS on December 29 at 9:00 p.m. EST.

On September 20, 2009, at Monterey Jazz Festival, Brubeck was awarded an honorary Doctor of Music degree (D. Mus. honoris causa) from Berklee College of Music.

On May 16, 2010, Brubeck was awarded an honorary Doctor of Music degree (honoris causa) from The George Washington University in Washington, DC. The ceremony took place on the National Mall.

On July 5, 2010, Brubeck was awarded the Miles-Davis Award at the Montreal International Jazz Festival. In 2010, Bruce Ricker and Clint Eastwood produced a documentary "Dave Brubeck: In His Own Sweet Way" about Brubeck for Turner Classic Movies (TCM) to commemorate his 90th birthday in December 2010.

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Humanitarian causes.

Brubeck has become a supporter of the Jazz Foundation of America in their mission to save the homes and the lives of elderly jazz and blues musicians, including musicians that survived Hurricane Katrina. Brubeck supported the Jazz Foundation by performing in their annual benefit concert "A Great Night in Harlem" in 2006.
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links:
http://www.davebrubeck.com/live/
http://library.pacific.edu/ha/brubeck/index.asp

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Brubeck

Images for all shows as well as full size images for this show.

Images for this show: