September 5, 2004 performance review by Dave Conlin Read
Tanglewood Jazz Festival 2004 came to a close shortly
before eleven o’clock Sunday September 5 and the last notes
played were not the work of Brubeck, or Connick, or
Marsalis – to name just 3 of the teriffic weekend’s headliners – but
old Johannes Brahms, whose “Lullaby” was played on flute by
Bobby Militello of the Dave Brubeck Quartet.
Militello toosed off a few lines of the song on flute
(with his saxophone tucked under his arm) when the quartet
came back onstage to acknowledge the audience’s ovation;
everybody cracked up, nobody expected a real encore; it was
another light, funny moment folded into a seriously
brilliant two and a half hour concert, including a dazzling
second set with the DBQ accompanied by the 23-piece Brubeck
Symphonette.
The audience was cued to Dave Brubeck’s playful mood
right from the start, when, after introducing his band, he
said: “I made a tune list and as we walked out here, I told
the boys to forget it. I’m going to play an old tune from
the 30s called ‘Margie’.”
Brubeck introduced the second number with an anecdote
about life on the road – more precisely, about getting
cranky deep into the Quartet’s third European tour of the
year and being placated by being setup with digs in London
for the remainder of the tour.
When he was told that, “We’ll put you up in a London
flat,” he said “Sharp!” It took the audience a moment to
get the joke: he gave them a chance at redemption when his
story continued in the form of introduction to “London Flat
London Sharp,” which Mr. Brubeck said he composed to dispel
the gloomy mood all the travel had gotten him into.
“Now, my left hand will run down the piano in Flats, and
my right hand will go up the piano in … .” SHARPS rang
out from the vast audience, now totally attuned and settled
in for a great musical experience.
The number featured a searing alto sax solo by Militello
and was followed by something completely different, “Theme
for June” from brother Howard Brubeck’s 1959 composition
“Dialogues for Jazz Combo and Orchestra.” Beginning with
sublime and quiet notes on the piano, it lead into a bass
solo wherein Michael Moore evoked a feeling of loneliness
so palpable it could make one shudder.
Randy Jones moved the tune along with whispering
brushwork, picking up the pace until Militello’s sax
lightened the feeling and finally Brubeck gave the whole
idea a second thought with a fanciful run of notes before
getting quiet again and fading to silence.
Brubeck spent a few minutes talking about his brother’s
composition, that it gave more room for the jazz musicians
to improvise than earlier pieces for jazz and orchestra,
and that Leonard Bernstein heard it at the original Music Inn in Lenox and
decided to record it, conducting the New York Philharmonic
with the DBQ in 1960.
Brubeck continued by telling us that in the early 50s
and even in the 40s, he “was messing around with crazy time
signatures” but that it didn’t work because people couldn’t
dance to the tunes. Then he began to do popular tunes,
doing them simple at first and then playing them crazy,
“because people didn’t listen once they were on the dance
floor!”
Around the same time he began listening to the little
yellow records of his kids and thought they were pretty
good. One of them was “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” from
which Brubeck wrote an arrangement of “Someday My Prince
Will Come.” Roundly dissed at the time for being so un-hip
as to embrace pop music, Brubeck reminded the audience that
it wasn’t long before the uber-cool Miles Davis put out his
own version of “Some Day…”
Listening to it tonight, one could waltz, march, and/or
just groove to Brubeck’s polyrhythmic genius. It was
followed by the recent piece, “Elegy,” written in memory of
Norwegian jazz journalist Randi Hultin, which featured
Moore’s sorrowful bowing bass and Militello’s plaintive
flute. Drummer Randy Jones had the spotlight as they ended the set
with “Out of the Way.”
For the second set, the quartet was joined onstage by
the 23-piece Brubeck Symphonette, all strings save for one French horn, conducted by Russell
Gloyd, who embellished on Brubeck’s earlier remarks by
saying that one of those London gigs was with the London
Symphony Orchestra during their 100th Anniversary
celebration, with Queen Elizabeth II in attendance. Gloyd
continued in M.C. mode, telling the story of how “Blue
Rondo A La Turk” came to be written by Brubeck after he was
intrigued by the rhythms he heard street musicians playing
in Istanbul while on a State Department tour during the
Eisenhower administration.
Besides “Blue Rondo…”, the set included “Brandenburg
Gate” which Brubeck described as being based on the rhythm
of ‘Danke schön’ German for ‘thank you;’ the
similiarly inspired “Regret,’ which repeats the sound of
that sad word throughout and which he invited the audience
to devise their own programs for because he didn’t know
what the piece was about; and “Lullaby” from his Christmas
cantata, “La Fiesta de la Posada.”
For the evening’s, and indeed, the Festival’s, grand
finale, we were presented with a scintillating performance
of “Take Five,” composed by Brubeck’s original saxophonist
Paul Desmond. All the solos were outstanding, especially
Randy Jones’, which got Brubeck to his feet the better to
enjoy it before returning to the piano to put the wraps on
one of the best concerts Ozawa Hall will ever hold.
