We lost one of the greatest jazz pianist 

December 6, 1920 – December 5, 2012
 

When Dave Brubeck, who has died a day short of his 92nd birthday,
played at Ohio’s Oberlin classical music conservatory in 1953,
the young jazz composer and pianist was warned to expect a cold reception.
Instead came a rapturous response.
His experimental musicianship and infectious enthusiasm quickly made him a figurehead of Fifties American cool.

Brubeck was a prolific and adventurous composer who incorporated the fugues
and counterpoint of classical music into ambitious jazz compositions,
investigated non-European scales and experimented with compound time signatures.
And the more adventurous he became, the more success he achieved.
In 1959 he released the platinum-selling album Time Out 
 – tracks included Blue Rondo A La Turk and the evergreen Take Five –
and the following year the symphonic Brubeck Plays Bernstein Plays Brubeck.

 

Dave Brubeck: 

A jazz icon who reached a massive audience

 

Dave Brubeck changed the sound of jazz in profound ways, unexpectedly becoming something of a pop star in the process.

Starting in the mid-1950s, in fact, he emerged as a symbol of jazz in America, and well beyond, gracing the cover of Time magazine in 1954 and selling more than a million copies of “Take Five” in 1960. To this day, the puckishly syncopated tune remains one of the most recognizable in jazz, though Brubeck didn’t write it – his alto saxophonist, Paul Desmond, did.

Beneath the popular acclaim stood a brilliant, uncompromising composer-pianist who challenged conventional jazz techniques, brought the music to American college campuses and helped break down racial barriers through a music uniquely suited to that task.

Brubeck was en route to an appointment with his cardiologist when he was stricken Wednesday morning,
said his longtime manager-producer-conductor, Russell Gloyd.
The pianist died of heart failure at Norwalk Hospital, in Norwalk, Conn., near his home in Wilton, Conn.

Brubeck was anticipating a birthday concert Thursday, when he would have turned 92.
The performance will go on, but in the form of a tribute, in Waterbury, Conn.

"Dave Brubeck was one of the giants in the music – he changed the way people listened to the music,”
said David Baker, distinguished professor of music at Indiana University and a friend of the Brubeck family.

read more     here

"Take Five" - 1966

Dave Brubeck - piano
Paul Desmond - alto saxophone
Eugene Wright - bass
Joe Morello - drums

Thanks for all the great music 
and for all the great hours spent listening to it. 

Will never forget you and will still keep listening.

http://www.davebrubeck.com/live/