Saturday, August 23, 2008

Dave Brubeck at Brookhaven Amphitheater 8.22.2008

Last night I had the chance to see the Dave Brubeck Quartet perform live right down the road from my house at the Brookhaven Amphitheater. Brubeck is one of my all-time favorite jazz musicians and it was amazing finally getting a chance to see him play. Sure he's 88 years old now and needed to be helped onstage but the moment he began to play he sounded as good as he did on all those classics albums. The musical vibrancy of the old foursome made me wonder if they had gone swimming in the pool from Cocoon with Wilford Brimley and Hume Cronyn before the show.

The concert covered a range of material from special compositions Brubeck created for the Catholic Church based on ancient hymns to jazz classics such as "One Day My Prince Will Come" and of course their always famous "Take Five". Bobby Militello blew the crowd away on alto sax showing off his own virtuoso qualities while keeping true to Paul Desmond's classic sound sparring sonically with the unique bass sound of Michael Moore and Randy Jones on drums. Brubeck is a classic- I've always loved his experimentation with time signatures and musical styles and he put on an incredible show that will not be forgotten.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I did not know that Dave Brubeck created "Someday My Prince Will Come" for the Catholic church. I believe it was his attempt at Disney classics. Such as in the album "Dave Digs Disney"
http://www.amazon.com/Dave-Digs-Disney-Brubeck/dp/B000002864

Needlesville, N.Y. said...

Your right- I was talking about 2 different things (he played the Catholic stuff he created as well as "Prince"). I always loved the Miles Davis version or "My Prince Will Come" the best but Dave did a pretty cool rendition as well.