Editor's pick: Dave Brubeck at Mountain Laurel

Concert

Thursday, August 3, 7:30 p.m. Mountain Laurel Center, Bushkill, PA. Tickets $25-$35; lawn $20. mountainlaurelcenter.com or 570/424-2000.

Dave Brubeck has been a jazz legend for half a century. “Take Five,” one of the biggest hits of the quartet he founded in 1951, has entered into the nation’s cultural vocabulary, and is recognized instantly (though not necessarily by name) even by those who know nothing about jazz. Brubeck is known in particular for unusual time signatures—“Take Five,” for instance, was written in 5/4—which initially made his label nervous but did not impede sales of his albums, some of which went platinum.

Brubeck dissolved his original quartet in 1967 but has remained an active and inventive performer and composer ever since. He will play at Mountain Laurel Center on Thursday, August 3 at 7:30 p.m. with his most recent quartet.

Opening for Brubeck will be Urbie Green, an internationally renowned trombonist who hails from the Poconos. Known widely as “the trombonists’ trombonist,” the Alabama-born Green played with Gene Krupa and Woody Herman in the ‘40s and recorded with nearly all the great jazz musicians of the ‘50s, ‘60s and beyond. Accompanying him on the piano will be his son, Jesse Green, and three jazz musicians from the region, to be announced.

Deer Head Inn, Delaware Water Gap’s venerable home for jazz and a center of gravity for many of the internationally known and aspiring jazz artists who live in the Poconos, will sponsor the evening and co-host a pre-show reception with Mountain Laurel Center’s CEO Richard T. Bryant before the performance.