Dave Brubeck

After spending much of the late 1960s and 1970s composing large-scale choral and orchestral works, including the jazz cantata The Real Ambassadors, Brubeck came back to the working quartet with this Concord record. Two of his sons are in the band, and the family element is not a novelty: Chris and Danny Brubeck bring genuine musicianship to a rhythm section that swings with an ease the choral years had set aside.

Jerry Bergonzi takes the saxophone chair that had belonged to Paul Desmond, and he makes no attempt to imitate. Where Desmond was cool and lateral, Bergonzi plays with a harder, more tenor-forward attack, and the result is a different kind of band. The music has more grit than the classic Columbia recordings, less polish, a working-band feeling that is entirely appealing.

Brubeck himself sounds genuinely refreshed. The odd-meter thinking is still present but less foregrounded, deployed when it feels natural rather than as a structural commitment. Back Home is not the best Brubeck album, but it is a convincing argument that the return was real and that the music still had somewhere to go.

Randy Jones joins on drums as the Concord band settles into a more stable lineup. Bergonzi is still on tenor and the rhythm section has a cleaner, more conventional swing feel than Back Home. Tritonis has a slightly different texture than the debut Concord record: more openly lyrical, the dense harmonic architecture of the Columbia years giving way to something airier.

Brubeck writes new originals for the session and revisits some older material. His solo piano interludes, brief passages where he plays alone before the band re-enters, have a meditative quality that points toward the ballad records of the later Telarc years. The odd meters surface on a few tracks, handled with enough naturalness that they register as color rather than concept.

A solid entry in the Concord run. Bergonzi would not stay long before Bobby Militello took over the saxophone chair, but these two Concord records with him document a transitional period that is more interesting than it typically gets credit for.

Bill Smith joins the band on clarinet and the change is significant. Brubeck and Smith go all the way back to the original octet at Mills College, and their rapport is old and settled in a way that takes years to develop. The clarinet gives this quartet a completely different texture from anything in the Columbia years: the woody, slightly plaintive clarinet sound sitting high above the rhythm section in a way Desmond's alto never quite did.

The repertoire leans toward standards, and Brubeck treats them with the patience of a musician who has been playing these songs for decades. "Paper Moon" opens the record with a bounce that Smith matches beautifully, his clarinet articulation quick and clean. The tempo changes throughout the set feel organic rather than demonstrative.

The Bill Smith albums are an underrated chapter in the Brubeck story. The clarinet voice is unusual in 1980s jazz, deliberately old-fashioned in a way that sounds like a choice rather than a default. This is chamber jazz of a very specific type, and Paper Moon is a warm and lovely example of it.

The best of the Concord recordings, and it is not particularly close. A live set from the Concord Jazz Festival in August 1982, it catches everything working at once: Brubeck inspired and swinging, Smith finding the most expressive corners of his clarinet voice, Chris Brubeck anchoring the rhythm section with quiet authority, and the outdoor festival atmosphere adding an energy that transfers completely through the recording.

"Blue Rondo a la Turk" gets the most revelatory treatment here of any version outside the original 1959 recording. In this live setting it sounds lighter than it ever has, as if the 9/8 time signature were simply the natural way to swing rather than an act of will. Brubeck plays the opening figure with a looseness that the studio version never quite achieved, and Smith's clarinet in the ensemble passages adds a texture that makes you wonder what the Columbia quartet might have sounded like with a woodwind instead of the alto.

"In Your Own Sweet Way" gets a definitive reading: slow, patient, Brubeck letting the harmonies open up completely before returning to the melody. The whole concert has the feeling of a musician fully at home in his own catalog, celebrating it without nostalgia. Five stars without reservation, and essential listening for anyone who has loved the Columbia records and wondered where Brubeck went next.

A tribute to Brubeck's wife Iola, who had written the libretto for The Real Ambassadors, his 1962 jazz cantata that addressed racial segregation through the story of Louis Armstrong on a State Department tour. The personal nature of the record does not make it soft or sentimental: it is tender in the way that something genuinely felt is tender, without reaching for effect.

The originals here are some of Brubeck's most directly melodic late-period writing. He was never afraid of a simple tune when the simplicity was real, and on this album the melodies have a quality of songs you feel you might have heard before even on first listening. Smith's clarinet suits the intimate material particularly well, finding a quietness in the instrument that the more extroverted Bill Smith numbers do not always reach.

For Iola sits somewhat apart from the more public-facing Concord records. It is a private album in a way that few jazz records manage to be, and the best tracks have a warmth that is distinct from the formal achievement of the classic Columbia era. Worth seeking out.

The State Department ambassador role one more time: Brubeck in Moscow in 1987, during the glasnost era, playing for Soviet audiences in the same spirit he had brought to the 1958 world tour that produced Jazz Impressions of Eurasia. The crowd response is real and audible throughout, a warmth that goes beyond politeness into genuine engagement with music they had not been allowed to hear freely.

"Take Five" sends the Moscow audience into something approaching euphoria. There is a particular quality to that moment: a piece that had been a radio hit in the United States for nearly thirty years landing in a room full of people for whom it represented something much larger than just a jazz record. Brubeck plays it with full awareness of what the moment means.

Bill Smith is in excellent form, his clarinet adding a European warmth that suits the setting perhaps better than Desmond's cooler alto might have. The whole concert has an energy that comes from occasion rather than rehearsal, and it comes through completely in the recording.

Bobby Militello arrives as the permanent saxophone voice, and the shift from Bill Smith's clarinet to Militello's alto gives the band a warmer, more immediately accessible sound. Where Smith brought a slightly austere, chamber quality, Militello plays with a lyricism that is more straightforwardly pleasing. On an album of reflective mid-tempo pieces, that warmth is exactly right.

Brubeck's writing in this period has the quality of music that has been distilled: each idea cleaner and more direct than what came before, without any of the architectural complexity of the Columbia years. "Quiet as the Moon" is a title that describes the album's mood almost perfectly. Nothing here is urgent or demonstrative. Everything is patient and deeply felt.

Jack Six is a bass player with a quiet authority that suits the material well. Randy Jones has been in the rhythm section long enough that the whole thing swings without effort. A lovely late-period record that deserves more attention than it typically receives.

The classic Columbia Quartet dissolved in 1967 after Paul Desmond and the others decided to move on, and Brubeck spent the following years writing large-scale choral and orchestral works before gradually rebuilding a working quartet. By the time he recorded Angel Eyes for Telarc in 1993, he had been working with Bobby Militello on alto saxophone and flute for several years, and the comfort between them is audible.

Militello is not Desmond. Nobody is. But he is a genuinely excellent alto player with a warmer, more lyrical approach than the cool detachment Desmond favored, and on a record built around ballads and reflective standards, that warmth works beautifully. The title track is a slow, careful version of the Matt Dennis standard, Brubeck playing it with all the harmonic intelligence you would expect and none of the need to show off that lesser pianists cannot resist on a ballad this familiar.

What is notable about this late-period record is how unhurried it feels. The urgency of the Columbia years, the need to prove that odd meters could swing and that jazz audiences could handle something unexpected, is entirely gone. What is left is a pianist at 72 who knows exactly what he wants to say and takes exactly as long as it needs to say it. A late-career record that rewards the patience you bring to it.

His 75th birthday record and one of the most genuinely joyful things he ever made. Telarc brought in a remarkable roster of guests across generations, pairing the 75-year-old Brubeck with players who had grown up listening to him. The combinations change track by track: sometimes a big ensemble, sometimes just a duo. The variety is the point.

Roy Hargrove brings a trumpet fire that lights up the uptempo pieces. Joshua Redman plays with the thoughtfulness of someone who knows the catalog and loves it. Michael Brecker comes in on tenor for a session that has an edge the smoother Telarc material sometimes lacks. Gerry Mulligan, an old friend, shows up with his baritone and the two of them play with the ease of musicians who have been talking to each other for forty years.

The album captures something that pure studio craft cannot manufacture: the pleasure of musicians who genuinely want to be in the same room together. Brubeck sounds energized rather than honored, engaged rather than commemorated. Five stars, and the best argument that a birthday album can be a real record rather than a ceremonial one.

Playing standards at 80, familiar material he has been living with for more than fifty years, and the interpretations are not perfunctory. There is a quality in the best late-period jazz that cannot be faked: the sense that the musician has finally arrived at exactly what a song is about, not because they have stopped discovering things but because the years have stripped away all the unnecessary searching. Brubeck plays these songs as if they are old friends.

Militello is the ideal partner for this kind of deeply felt, unhurried playing. His alto has the warmth and patience to sustain slow tempos without losing the swing feel, and on the ballads here he plays with a simplicity that matches Brubeck's own. Nothing is excessive. Nothing is withheld.

The rhythm section of Six and Jones is so settled by this point that they function almost as a single instrument. Just You, Just Me is not Brubeck's most ambitious record, but it is one of his most consistently beautiful, and there is a case to be made that this kind of achieved simplicity is harder to reach than anything on Time Out.

Inspired by a British tour, and Brubeck writing originals at 83 remains one of the more remarkable facts about the later period of his career. The pieces here have the quality of Brubeck's best late writing: harmonic ideas that are both ambitious and clear, rhythmic thinking that suggests the odd meters without foregrounding them, melodies that are easy to follow and reveal new things over repeated listenings.

London gives the album a slightly different atmosphere from the California and New England associations of the earlier records. A few of the pieces have a grey, autumnal quality that suits the material and Brubeck's voice in this period. Militello responds to the new compositions with playing that is engaged and specific rather than generically lyrical.

Not every piece lands equally, and the record has a few stretches where the mood becomes more uniform than it needs to be. But on balance this is a strong late-period album from a musician who was still genuinely curious about what the music could do.

The last studio album before his death in December 2012, recorded when he was 86. A solo piano record, and the title fits with a precision that was probably not entirely accidental: this is late-season music, warm and reflective, the afternoon light at a particular angle. Brubeck plays these pieces with the patience of someone who knows exactly how long each idea needs and exactly when to let it go.

Alone at the piano, without the quartet to lean on, every harmonic choice is exposed, and what you hear is the full depth of Brubeck's musical thinking. The block chords, the polyrhythmic passages, the sudden moments of spare lyricism: all of it is here, distilled to its essence. There is nowhere to hide in a solo piano record, and Brubeck does not try. The playing is honest and unhurried.

Indian Summer is a quiet close to a great career, and genuinely moving if you come to it knowing what it is. Brubeck died five years after this recording, one day before his 92nd birthday. The music on this album does not sound like a farewell because it was not intended as one, but it has the quality of a musician fully at peace with what he has made. That is its own kind of grace.