Brubeck at Mountain Laurel: 86 and still surprising

By TOM KANE

BUSHKILL, PA — Legendary jazz pianist Dave Brubeck, who has now reached the grand old age of 86, demonstrated one of the secrets to his enormous lifetime success at the concert at the Mountain Laurel Center for the Performing Arts (MLCPA) on Thursday, August 3: the persistent unorthodoxy of his musical style.

Paramount to this style is the experimentation with time signatures that characterizes his music over the years. They are so unexpected that you (or at least I) never seem to get tired of them. They perplex, yet charm, the ear. There’s always something new and out of form about them.

One example—there are many others—is the time signature of his mega-hit, “Take Five,” which is his best known and most popular work. It’s written in five/four time. That may not impress you if you aren’t a musician, but in 1954, to create such an unconventional tempo in jazz was astounding and innovative.

Last Thursday evening, when Burbeck came on stage with the members of his quartet at Mountain Laurel, walking rather like the old man that he is, I thought the performance might be uneventful but curious. I had lost contact with his career over recent years and didn’t know he was still touring and recording. But when he sat at the piano and arched his chest over the keyboard and reached out with his elderly hands, the sound that emerged was crisp, strong, controlled, complex and completely surprising. These were the chords of a vigorous practitioner and innovator who was very much at home in his element. It reminded me of the wonderful performance I heard when Vladimir Horowitz, age 85, played for the first time in his adult life in his native Russia. He too was vigorous beyond his years.

Here was the Dave Brubeck Quartet, formed originally in 1959 and disbanded in 1967, resurrected on the stage of the Tom Ridge Pavilion. What was new were the rich classical patterns that Brubeck brought to his compositions from his work with the French classicist, Darius Milhaud, with whom he studied for a few years.

“His enormous musical versatility in both jazz and classical music is exceptional,” said music critic Norman Middleton. “His uncanny ability to assimilate music of diverse cultures allows him to be fluent in integrating various ethnic musical characteristics into his performance and creative compositions.”

There were times during the performance when, closing my eyes, I could have sworn the music coming from the stage was Chopin or Liszt. It had a distinct classical music feel to it for a few minutes, before the unmistakable architecture of modern jazz took over.

Brubeck’s fame is legendary. In 1954, his picture appeared on the cover of Time magazine, accompanying a story of how he heralded the rebirth of modern jazz. Not many popular musicians have been granted that high a pedestal. He was also awarded the National Merit of the Arts by President Clinton in 1994.

With his wife Iola, he founded the Brubeck Institute in 2000. Located on the campus of the University of the Pacific library in Stockton, CA, the institute is a living archive where jazz and contemporary music are studied, performed, composed, improvised and brought to the world.

At the end of the concert, Brubeck began the unmistakable beat of “Take Five” with its subsequent rhythmic theme and the crowd went nuts. Here were avid jazz fans from far and wide listening to a master.

Surprisingly, the master is still touring—at his age, a distinct feat. He left immediately after the performance and headed for New Haven, where he would play the next evening.

Dave Brubeck is in a class all by himself. No one, except possible George Shearing, can come near to his innovation, classicism, creativity and complexity. A man of this genius doesn’t come down the pike very often. If he is playing nearby, I’m going to be sure to go and you should too.