Dave Brubeck: A Life in Time

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The bandleader’s early years and his rise from obscurity are closely examined, but the main focus of the story is inevitably the 10-year lifespan of Brubeck’s classic quartet, in which he and the alto saxophonist Paul Desmond, his long-term musical partner (and the composer of “Take Five”), were joined by the bassist Eugene Wright and the drummer Joe Morello. Some of the data that are collected include the number of visitors, their source, and the pages they visit anonymously. I would have to seen more about Brubeck's life and his music without the technical terms this book took. While most casual fans want to know about his work with the “classic quartet” in the 1950s and 60s (and the book devotes plenty of space to it), it’s refreshing to get to learn about Brubeck’s work beyond that period.

However this book uses a lot of musical technical terms which takes away from the book, and makes it challenging to read at times. The only Brubeck LP we had was “Jazz Impressions of Japan,” so that was my entry point into his work. 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. Each chapter reviews a different aspect of Dave Brubeck's career and does so in a very well argued and well presented manner. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others.

But when he concentrated for a dozen or so pages on discussing Time Out - my personal favorite of Brubeck's albums, featuring tracks with the off-kilter time signatures like 'Take Five,' 'Blue Rondo a la Turk,' and 'Three to Get Ready' - it was great.

sax, interaction with Charlie Parker; and including the early Octet, which had a strong alignment with the chromatic ideas of Milhaud etc. The emphasis on the technical side of Brubeck's music, and on Brubeck's impact on rock and other nonjazz music, is thought provoking.

For all his success, Brubeck was an essentially modest and unpretentious man whose immediate reaction to the Time magazine cover was that it should have gone to Duke Ellington.

we feel the grain and texture and historical weight of single moments, but only because we also understand the larger picture. Unlike many jazz musicians, he was a student of modern music pioneer Darius Milhaud and his compositions and playing always had one foot in the realm of modernism, with its polytonality. Chords retain their basic identities while spawning a spectrum of notes, now forced into unlikely alliances, that blend and clash unpredictably. Alongside beloved figures like Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra, Brubeck’s music has achieved name recognition beyond jazz. For all the resentment he provoked, and the scorn poured on his sometimes heavy-handed playing, Brubeck was an interesting musician whose experiments with unorthodox time signatures helped open the way for others to venture beyond the standard 4/4 and waltz time.

Alongside beloved figures like Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra, Brubeck has achieved name recognition beyond jazz. DAVE BRUBECK: A Life in Time is about the timeless life of the inspired and inspiring jazz master Dave Brubeck. Brubeck opened up as never before, disclosing his unique approach to jazz; the heady days of his "classic" quartet in the 1950s-60s; hanging out with Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong, and Miles Davis; and the many controversies that had dogged his 66-year-long career. I started to read looking for the key to appreciating Brubeck which in over 50 years of intense jazz listening I haven't managed to do.

The brain, hopefully, grasps increasingly complex interrelationships between unrelated chords as our ears acquire a taste for a tarter and more aromatic harmonic palette. Another episode reaccented the 3+3 of 6/8 to become the 2+2+2 of 3/4, a neat rhythmic pun to chew on as Brubeck's harmony feasted on another, more existential ambiguity: Was the music in the major or the minor? He supplements those conversations with material from Brubeck’s extensive personal archive, to which he was given access. Critics thought he was too classic and too "white" in his playing even though his technique was grounded in stride and barrelhouse piano players like Fats Waller, Willie "The Lion" Smith and Erroll Garner.Woven throughout are cameo appearances from a host of unlikely figures from Sting, Ray Manzarek of The Doors, and Keith Emerson, to John Cage, Leonard Bernstein, Harry Partch, and Edgard Varese. Hopefully these quotes give an idea of the intense, well informed discussion that Philip Clark presents.