Dave Brubeck Quotes

• When you start out with goals – mine were to play polytonally and polyrhythmically – you never exhaust that. I started doing that in the 1940s. It’s still a challenge to discover what can be done with just those two elements.

  Dave Brubeck

  Topics in Goal

• When you hear Bach or Mozart, you hear perfection. Remember that Bach, Mozart and Beethoven were great improvisers. I can hear that in their music.

  Dave Brubeck

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Music

• When I was first aware that I couldn’t read music I didn’t know I couldn’t read because I could play the music that was in front of me.

  Dave Brubeck

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Music, Play

• What I want to happen is to be really creative, and to play something new in the improvisations, every time.

  Dave Brubeck

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Time, Happen

• When I was 20, Shostakovich was my favorite composer. I still find his Fifth Symphony wonderful, with its outstanding themes and rhythms. That’s the piece that made me want to be a classical composer.

  Dave Brubeck

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Wonderful

• The worst thing about the life of a jazz musician on the road is getting to the gig. Once you’re there and playing, it’s marvelous.

  Dave Brubeck

  Topics in Life

• The first choral music I remember hearing was Handel’s ‘Messiah’ when the Mormon Tabernacle Choir broadcast it over the radio.

  Dave Brubeck

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Music

• That’s the beauty of music. You can take a theme from a Bach sacred chorale and improvise. It doesn’t make any difference where the theme comes from; the treatment of it can be jazz.

  Dave Brubeck

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Music

• My own Brubeck Institute in California is turning out fantastic young jazz players, and I know great things will happen.

  Dave Brubeck

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Great

• My mother Elizabeth Ivey Brubeck was a pianist who studied with Dame Myra Hess and Tobias Matthey. As a child in California I used to listen to her play Chopin.

  Dave Brubeck

  Topics in Mother

• My dad was the manager at the 45,000-acre ranch, but he owned his own 1,200-acre ranch, and I owned four cattle that he gave to me when I graduated from grammar school, from the eighth grade. And those cows multiplied, and he kept track of them for years for me. And that was my herd.

  Dave Brubeck

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in School

• Many people don’t understand how disciplined you have to be to play jazz… And that is really the idea of democracy – freedom within the Constitution or discipline. You don’t just get out there and do anything you want.

  Dave Brubeck

  Topics in Democracy

  Tags in Freedom

• Jazz stands for freedom. It’s supposed to be the voice of freedom: Get out there and improvise, and take chances, and don’t be a perfectionist – leave that to the classical musicians.

  Dave Brubeck

  Topics in Perfection

  Tags in Freedom

• Jazz isn’t dead yet. It’s the underpinning of everything in this country. Whether it’s a Broadway show, or fusion, or right on through classical music, if it’s coming out of the U.S., it’s not going to survive unless it’s got some jazz influence.

  Dave Brubeck

  Topics in Country

  Tags in Music

• Jazz is about freedom within discipline. Usually a dictatorship like in Russia and Germany will prevent jazz from being played because it just seemed to represent freedom, democracy and the United States.

  Dave Brubeck

  Topics in Democracy

  Tags in Like, Freedom

• It’s like a whole orchestra, the piano for me. And also it’s to me the greatest instrument. I shouldn’t say that, but I believe that this is the only instrument I can really feel happy about playing.

  Dave Brubeck

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Like, Happy

• If I told you all the people that have secretly told me I’ve influenced them, you’d never believe it, and you’ll never see it in print, either.

  Dave Brubeck

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in People, Believe, Influenced

• If there’s a deadline, I work late. If not, I like to have normal hours, and get up early and work. When things are going well, I hate to quit. And then I’ll work ’till exhausted.

  Dave Brubeck

  Topics in Work

  Tags in Like, Hate

• I was always very aware of drummers. My oldest brother Henry was a drummer, and he drummed on everything in the house from the kitchen sink to stovepipes. He was the first drummer in the Gil Evans Orchestra, so you’ve got to know how great he was.

  Dave Brubeck

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Great

• I wanted to be like my father, who was a cattle man and a rodeo roper. And that was – he was my hero, and I wanted to be more like him.

  Dave Brubeck

  Topics in Father

  Tags in Like

Dave Brubeck (37)

Birth:	6th December, 1920
Death:	5th December, 2012
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Bandleader, Composer, Pianist

About

David Warren "Dave" Brubeck was born in Concord, California. He was an American jazz pianist, bandleader and composer. He wrote a number of jazz standards, including "In Your Own Sweet Way" and "The Duke." His music is known for employing unusual time signatures, and superimposing contrasting rhythms, meters, and tonalities. He was also a respected composer of orchestral and sacred music, and wrote soundtracks for television such as Mr. Broadway and the animated miniseries This Is America, Charlie Brown.

Related Authors

• Art Blakey
• Dave Brubeck
• Ian Dury
• Chris Barber
• Buck Owens
• Count Basie
• Bud Freeman
• Dave Holland
• Bruce Turner
• Carla Bley

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Today's Anniversary - 15th January

Births

• 1897 - Xu Zhimo
• 1941 - Don Van Vliet
• 1914 - Etty Hillesum
• 1842 - Mary MacKillop
• 1975 - Mary Pierce

Deaths

• 1996 - Les Baxter
• 1919 - Rosa Luxemburg
• 2005 - Victoria De Los Angeles
• 1993 - Sammy Cahn
• 1982 - Red Smith