Dave Brubeck Quartet at Carnegie Hall

The Dave Brubeck Quartet was among the most popular, tightest-sounding, long-lasting, and lucrative combos in jazz history. Brubeck, academically trained under Darius Milhaud, was outspoken about the use of improvisation, polytonality, and polyrhythm in jazz. Brubeck and Paul Desmond frequently composed in 5/4, 9/8, 11/4, not your average time signatures in the 1950’s and 60’s. At the peak of their popularity, they were using some fairly wild musical devices for the times, yet their music was always accessible and they were never categorized as avant-garde.  Brubeck also was among the first to capitalize on presenting jazz to university and concert-hall audiences. Even looking backward from today’s perspective, they must be considered one of the most formidable and unique group playing the art of jazz.

It is somewhat unfortunate that Paul Desmond and Joe Morello, the alto saxophonist and drummer, had their fame tied to pianist-composer Dave Brubeck. Outside of the Brubeck Quartet, Desmond is fairly well recorded, notably with guitarist Jim Hall. He was also the composer of one of the few jazz hits, “Take Five,” a composition that introduced millions to the sound of jazz. Perhaps his sound was too sweet, romantic, and swinging for him to be frequently cited as one of the great saxophonists. Perhaps he lacked the funky rough edge that some of the modernists favored. Like with the name Hodges, blasé modernist fans tend to give a blank stare when Desmond is mentioned. But Desmond was one of those players (like Johnny Hodges) whose sound was unique, immediately identifiable, and with impeccable swing.

The eyes of people who know of Gene Krupa and Mel Lewis light up when Joe Morello’s name is mentioned. Morello’s style was characterized by a euphoric looseness and an ability to play four different time-signatures simultaneously. It didn’t matter if he was on brushes or sticks, a ballad or a hard-driver, Morello was the supreme accompanist who also managed sound as if he were playing a never-ending solo. He was the kind of drummer who always finds a hole to fill –or leave empty- and in the process throw the listening gear into a different over-drive.

These two CDs present a full, unedited concert performance in front of an enthusiastic New York City audience. Desmond and Morello are in highest musical spirits as the Quartet runs through its repertoire of well known original compositions and hip arrangements of jazz standards: “Pennies from Heaven,” “Southern Scene,” ”Blue Rondo a la Turk,” and “Take Five.”

During his solos, Brubeck uses a method to rouse audience excitement: he launches into repetitive block-chords played over an arc of increasing volume and rising tempo. This gradually increases the tension until Brubeck reaches a resolution and then the crowd of fans goes wild. Of more musical interest, however, is the way Morello deals with Brubeck’s repetitious technique. As a time-keeper he is rock solid, but constantly shuffles his support of the pianist with punctuations consisting of bombs, rim-shots, periods of silence between strokes of the sticks. Brubeck uses the block-chord trick often enough during the concert that it comes to be an expected item, and the crowd falls for it every time. And that, of course, is show business.

Morello gets to show his own business on “Castilian Drums,” a 12 minute drum solo. Morello is a story-teller on the kit. The entire piece is actually a of short solos that move from climax to climax. He builds from phrases into sentences, and then into paragraphs. And you always know where the punctuations marks are. Morello delights in isolating and exploring one part of the kit while keeping a complex rhythm on another part. He uses a wide dynamic range, building incrementally from silent pauses to explosive power and everything in-between. He was also renowned for his use of the bass drum, not as a thumping time-keeper or “bomb” device but as a mechanism as expressive as the sticks. This solo is mainly in 5/4 time, and I’d rate it as the most musical recorded drum solo I have ever heard.

After Morello’s crowd-rouser; Paul Desmond has the privilege of the first solo on “Blue Rondo a la Turk.” He approaches the composition with characteristic aplomb, laid-back in contrast to Morello’s slightly-rushed approach. Desmond too is a story-teller, but he speaks in a breezy manner as if the hurricane-strength storms of winter were over and it is the first day of spring (other commentators have long used the phrase “dry martini” to describe his sound).

Desmond’s structured solo opens with a phrase that repeats itself four times, each time extending it with a different resolution. You can feel it building to a logical end, all based on permutations of the opening phrases, all in the mid-range of the horn. But at 4:17, he punctuates a phrase with a high note a couple of octaves above the range he is nominally in. He hits that remarkable note another four times, making one think that Desmond has lost his cool. But no, he nonchalantly continues on until Morello slaps a stick on the snare and the solo ends.

The only critique I would make of this CD is that there is too much crowd noise. This concert had a crowd that couldn’t wait to applaud, and there are times when the hand-clapping and whistling is actually louder than the music. Is there any technical reason it could have been engineered to a more appropriate level in the digital re-mastering?

The Dave Brubeck Quartet at Carnegie Hall is a classic jazz concert containing high-level music. I would regard it as essential to any jazz collection.

Originally published in 5/4 Magazine, Seattle

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