Time for Brubeck

Chatting with jazz piano icon Dave Brubeck plays out much the same way as listening to one of his solos.

He'll state his premise plainly, with deceptive simplicity, and then he'll revisit it, adding a phrase or nuance. At age 86, the composer/musician has replaced some of his earlier fervor with a shrewd, steady certainty.

"I worked harder when I was younger," Brubeck concedes. "I could sometimes work two or three days with practically no sleep, and not even stop to eat. I don't do that anymore."

If that sounds like retirement, don't believe it. After more than six decades as a musical innovator, Brubeck still writes and records new work. His newest CD, "Indian Summer," came out earlier this month.

And he plays up to 80 concert dates a year. His restless schedule brings him to perform Saturday in Santa Rosa at a fund-raiser for the Healdsburg Jazz Festival.

"Not working is something I've never heard of," Brubeck said by phone from his home in Wilton, Conn. "You do what the next phone call says. If you go onstage feeling pretty down, usually after two hours of playing, you feel a lot better."

That does not mean the star has faded, said John Burks, a jazz scholar and former managing editor of Rolling Stone magazine who lives in Pacifica.

"I don't think Brubeck's as much of a wild man as he was in his youth," Burks said. "But I've heard the CDs out of his later years, and he's still really playing. It's not like an old man, barely pressing the keys."

Brubeck has been a leader in modern jazz longer than most touring musicians today have been alive. Born in Concord and raised on the 45,000-acre cattle ranch his father managed, Brubeck started performing professionally when he was 13.

In the 1940s, Brubeck studied classical composition with Mills College professor and composer Darius Milhaud (for whom Brubeck later named the first of his six sons).

"Milhaud was the first classical composer that used the jazz idiom, in a piece called 'The Creation of the World,' which was a jazz ballet," Brubeck said. "So it was great to have a great classical composer who was so interested in jazz be our mentor."

What Brubeck learned from Milhaud became part of the fabric of his work.

"Some of the early jazz things Brubeck wrote very much have that influence, a modern chamber music feeling," Burks explained. "It was totally different from anything the beboppers or anyone before him had ever done."

Already, Brubeck was breaking down musical boundaries, and that was just the beginning. In the early 1950s, he recorded two live albums on college campuses, bringing jazz to a young audience that had never shown much interest in the genre before.

"That was when he became popular with the college crowd," said Burks, now a journalism professor at San Francisco State University. "Jazz became a major thing on campuses all around the country, maybe because these recordings were done on college campuses, or maybe because he just hit a responsive chord."

By 1954, Brubeck's face was on the cover of Time magazine, which heralded him as a leader in the rebirth of jazz. Another musician might have ridden on that success for the rest of his career, but Brubeck pushed on.

In 1960, the Dave Brubeck Quartet released the coyly titled "Time Out" album, loaded with oddly metered rhythms. The record became the first million-seller in modern jazz and spawned the single hits "Take Five" and "Blue Rondo a la Turk."

Burks, now in his mid-60s, was a teenager then and trying to play jazz drums, but Brubeck's compositions were too much for him.

" 'Take 5' was like a riddle. You had to fit five beats where four would normally go," Burks said. "The thing I marvel at with Brubeck and his guys is that they could do that and just make it all sound just perfectly natural. They were going someplace nobody had ever gone before, but it had a flow. It had a grace to it."

Brubeck never forgot his classical aspirations. He appeared with the New York Philharmonic, conducted by Leonard Bernstein, and together they later recorded "Dialogues for Jazz Combo and Orchestra," composed by Dave's late brother, Howard. (Howard's widow and two of their daughters live in Santa Rosa and go to hear Brubeck when he performs in California.)

Brubeck has produced an impressive body of work during his long career, much of it experimental, and he's still adding to it.

"There's 170 CDs out there," Brubeck said. "Then there's all kinds of classical things. We just performed on BBC two weeks ago. About six months ago, we recorded at Lincoln Center in New York a piece called 'The Gates of Justice' and a new choral piece called 'The Commandments.' "

How does one man manage to be scholar, star, experimental technician and popular entertainer, all in a single lifetime -- even a very long one? Burks has been puzzling over that on and off for years.

"I always thought Brubeck represented an odd mixture," Burks said. "He was very cerebral, quite intellectual, in his approach, but he could move from the gentlest, lullaby-like playing into just thundering across the keyboard."

A popular legend in jazz circles has it that Brubeck's piano had to be retuned every night, because he banged on it so hard.

It's tempting to suppose Brubeck plays softer now that he's older and mellower, but it's hard to know for sure because, as Brubeck himself says, "It's different every night."

Even so, nearly half a century after he first recorded "Take Five," Brubeck still plays his trademark tune in concert.

"If you want to get out of the auditorium alive, you'd better," Brubeck joked. "And they want 'Blue Rondo' and 'Three to Get Ready' -- a lot of those cuts from 'Time Out.' "

There's a simple reason Brubeck never tires of playing his fans' old favorites, Burks explained.

"What a lot of people want when they go hear the group is 'Take Five,' " he said. "I've probably heard Brubeck play it live seven or eight times, and it never was the same thing twice, not even close. That's a really adventurous mind.

"I never got the feeling with Brubeck that he had any set pieces at all," Burks added. "It seemed like every single thing he played was a new exploration for him."

You can reach Staff Writer Dan Taylor at 521-5243 or dan.taylor@pressdemocrat.com.