compilation of Reviews for Brubecks Play Brubeck - Reviews for ‘Brubecks Play Brubeck’ 2010 and 2011
Friday, November 11, 2011 Brubecks Play Brubeck at Ronnie Scott’s
Clive Davis
The Times: Rating: 4 stars
At the end of a joyous second set the pianist Darius Brubeck and his brothers cued in the audience’s handclaps on Unsquare Dance. More than half a century after their father invited listeners to start counting in odd numbers, the music has lost none of its poise. If Dave Brubeck was not treated kindly by Fifties critics, who seemed suspicious of his ability to reach out to folk who would never have been caught wearing a beret, history has surely vindicated him.
At 90, the patriarch is no longer a globetrotter, but Darius, drummer Dan and bass guitarist-trombonist Chris are doing a sterling job of spreading the word. (Another member of the clan, Matt, an excellent cellist and sometime collaborator with Yo-Yo Ma, has made a name for himself with bands including the wonderfully quirky Oranj Symphonette.) Launching their tour alongside British tenor saxophonist Dave O’Higgins, the three brothers cannily balanced respect for the past with a determination to push on further down the road.
O’Higgins brings muscle as well as brains to the line-up. On Take Five his solo brought a hint of Coltrane into the mix. If the group’s version of Blue Rondo à la Turk was a mite ponderous in comparison with the original, the remainder of the programme grew in stature. Darius is as cultured a pianist as his father. His own composition The Lion at the Bar — inspired by memories of his time as an educator in South Africa — opened with tremulous, Abdullah Ibrahim-like chords before swooping into an impassioned township rhythm.
Chris Brubeck’s graceful lines on the fretless bass stirred a subtle counterpoint throughout. Brother Dan’s pony-tail may not be the last word in hipster fashion, but his drumming was an immaculate fusion of power and dexterity. Joe Morello would surely have approved of the epic solo on Take Five. Early in the second set, Chris demonstrated his versatility by switching to trombone for a mellifluous version of Strange Meadowlark, Darius supplying the accompaniment. The group’s residency ends on Saturday.
Brubeck Plays Brubeck
Description: The Darius Brubeck band play the music of the pianist's father, Dave Brubeck.
Jack Massarik The Evening Standard
rating 3 stars
Brubecks Play Brubeck, Ronnie Scott's – review
Piano patriarch Dave Brubeck rations his appearances these days and rightly so. He'd probably love to jam seven nights a week but he turns 92 next month and is also aware that three of his sons - pianist Darius, bass guitarist Chris and drummer Dave - are perfectly capable of running the family business.
Darius, the eldest and most visually like his father, plays stylish piano and knows the score.
"We have some new tunes for you," he said last night, "but our family repertoire contains many hits and we play 'em all." The opener, Blue Rondo à la Turk, was a perfect example. It once spent six months in the US top 40, socking exotic beats and quasi-classical melody lines to unsuspecting jukebox listeners.
Fronting the quartet on tenor and soprano saxes was Dave O'Higgins, a Londoner following in the footsteps of Paul Desmond and Bobby Militello.
O'Higgins, who also works with US tenorist Eric Alexander, is another case of Britain achieving parity in the international jazz world. He sailed through the time-signature test with A Raggy Waltz (6/8 time), Dance of the Shadows (5/4) and Autumn in Our Town (3/4). These tunes inhabit a typical Brubeck set, and if they don't play Take Five as well you should ask for your money back.
Brubecks Play Brubeck, Ronnie Scott's, London
John Fordham - The Guardian (Dec 3, 2010)
Tuesday 30 November 2010
Few jazz musicians make it into the pop charts, even fewer for instrumental music of such coolly labyrinthine grooves that audiences could barely shake a leg to it. California-born pianist and composer Dave Brubeck – who did all that in the 1950s and 60s, and whose 90th birthday is next week – is one of the great popularisers of jazz, a visionary who made it speak to millions without selling its audacious spirit down the river. He no longer plays internationally, but his musician sons Darius, Chris and Dan, augmented by British saxist Dave O'Higgins, are rekindling the old magic. The four cantered affectionately through the hit list, but shrewdly didn't try to clone the original sound. Typically playful, time-juggling themes such as Raggy Waltz emphasised both their composer's far-sighted fusions of classical and jazz forms, and the current ensemble's own identity, particularly in drummer Dan's looser, splashier sound and electric bassist Chris's slippery and sometimes funk-influenced phrasing. And O'Higgins is a contemporary tenor and soprano player of keening soulfulness rather than an airy, fluttering alto saxist like the late Paul Desmond. But O'Higgins's edge brought a renewed poignancy to the dreamy Koto Song, and on Take Five his climax-building high-end multiphonics contrasted with Darius's steady enunciation of the famous 5/4 riff. The pianist's Lion at the Bar, a boogieing groover that reflected Darius's playing and teaching experience in South Africa, reminded the audience that sheltering under the Brubeck umbrella is by no means all the maestro's offspring do.
Brubecks on Brubeck, Town Hall, Birmingham, 29-11-2010
Peter Bacon - The Jazz Breakfast, November 30, 2010
A bitterly cold Birmingham Monday evening, and if outside the Town Hall the German market was lifting spirits a little, inside the Town Hall the spirit of Dave Brubeck was doing a lot more.
The three Brubeck brothers, Darius on piano, Chris on bass and Dan on drums, together with Dave O’Higgins on tenor and soprano saxophones, played a programme which mixed the big hits with lesser known Brubeck pieces. Shrewdly, all were taken from a strongly contained part of the expansive Brubeck canon: the best-selling Time Out and Time Further Out albums, and the Jazz Impressions of Eurasia and Jazz Impressions of Japan albums which bookended them.
Now there were bound to be conflicting desires in the hearts of the predominantly mature audience (that is to say, an audience that has been living with this music for the last 50 years): they wanted to hear Three To Get Ready, Blue Rondo a la Turk, It’s A Raggy Waltz, Take Five, all as they have them stored in their memories. But, if they thought about it, they also wanted proper jazz, ie spontaneous creation in the moment, and the players up there on the stage to be themselves.
And that is what they got. Darius, Chris and Dan may be the sons of Dave but they are also strong and experienced musicians in their own right, and playing cover versions of the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s greatest hits preserved in aspic is not their style.
There were clever references back, of course. Darius favoured the strongly rhythmic, richly harmonised double-handed chordal approach to improvisation that is very much in the tradition of his father; Dan, in the crucial drum solo in Take Five, made just the right references to Joe Morrello’s original while going his own way.
As a tribute to the music of Dave Brubeck, one could not have asked for more.
The Middle Eastern inflections of The Golden Horn and Nomad, from the Eurasian impressions, and The Koto Song from the Japanese ones, provided rich expansions of the Brubeck sound and style, reminding us the huge part Dave Brubeck had played (like Duke Ellington before him) in taking jazz to the world, and feeding the world back into jazz.
Strikingly, for me, the two real high points of the evening were ones when the musical characters on the stage found themselves loosened from the Dave Brubeck Quartet material.
One was Dance Of The Shadows, a recent tune from Chris and Dan’s own band, which brought forth more relaxed performances from all four players, especially from Dan whose natural home would seem to be in a jazz-rock fusion space. O’Higgins, here, felt able to let himself go a bit, and dig deeper into his wealth of tenor power.
The other highlight was still a Dave Brubeck Quartet song, Strange Meadow Lark, but freed from the quartet format. Darius and Chris, this time on his more usual instrument, the trombone, played a truly glorious duet and sounded like this was where they were truly themselves.
The audience clapped along with infectious 7/4 rhythm of Unsquare Dance as the encore, and then queued to meet the band and share their memories with them. Dave Brubeck’s enduring spirit would warm the journey home.
Brubecks Play Brubeck, The Bridgewater Hall, 22 November, 2010
Simon A. Morrison - City Life: What's On (Nov 22, 2010)
‘Brubecks Play Brubeck’ as in: three sons of jazz great Dave Brubeck play music from their Dad’s back catalogue. Brubeck Snr - 90 on December 6th - no longer flies so if you want to hear Brubeck music, who better than the people who grew with it as much as Oreos and summer cook outs? Would you rather have Julian Lennon sing you Imagine, or Jedward?
Eldest son Darius takes his Dad’s place on piano. Dan Brubeck’s on drums, playing a very modern (in the sense of 50’s modern) fractious style, progressing his father’s love of complex time signatures. Chris Brubeck straps on what looks like a fretless bass, playing the strings high up the neck to give it a double bass sound. They are joined by limey Dave O’Higgins on sax, who traces elegant melodies before stepping away to let the Brubecks take counterpoint, tag-teaming solos like brothers playing backyard basketball.
The set kicks off with Blue Rondo a la Turk, then progresses through cuts from Brubeck Snr’s repertoire: In Your Own Sweet Way, Koto Song, It’s A Raggy Waltz… each treated with deference, executed with competence. Dave Brubeck had that smoother, West Coast swing more in tune with Chet Baker and Gerry Mulligan than east coast bebop peers such as Bud Powell. However things pick up pace with Nomad before concluding with the ever fabulous Take 5 and Unsquare Dance, in 7/4 time (try clicking your fingers to that… it renders the coolest of hip cats a maths geek at a faculty dance).
The Bridgewater Hall is a fair call for such a concert but it’s regrettably undersubscribed - you want jazz to lift the roof off the place and that’s too lofty an ambition for tonight. However, with four of Dave’s six children now world-renowned musicians, you can only imagine how much fun it was round at the Brubecks come Christmas…
