Word: brubecks
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Brubeck's performance, initially scheduled to be in Sanders Theatre, had to be transferred to the second floor Common Room...
...little band plays in quiet tones. Picking out a popular tune like All the Things You Are, Pianist Brubeck and Saxophonist Paul Desmond toss the theme back & forth for a while. Then, before long, the tune disappears and in its place, stream-of-consciousness style, come whimsical variations hinting at everything from Stravinsky to Gershwin to Bach. When he comes to his solo part, Brubeck picks a random theme and toys with it, reflectively trying it first on the white keys, then on the black, allowing traces of Mozart or John Philip Sousa to creep in. Then his eyes close...
...Brubeck harmonies become more & more complicated, build up to a pulsing climax, then, rather unbelievably, push on past it. At the final peak Brubeck is often playing in two keys at once before he finally wrings his idea dry and the music subsides. When it is over, the jive fans look at each other in something like a daze before they burst into applause...
...Dave Brubeck plays in a kind of daze of his own: he can never remember exactly what he did during his finest solos ("When I'm playing my best I never know my fingers are there"). But as a man who is conscious of his subconscious, he has decided that his best flights of fancy occur only when he can "get through...
Like many a post-bop jazzman, Brubeck has no name for his style of playing. He just calls it "music...