- Dave Brubeck at the White House for the 2009 Kennedy Center Honors
Welcome to the newest section of our site (as of December 6, 2011), Artist Birthdays! Each day I’ll be posting a video for an artists whose birthday it is, along with a little blurb about the artist. Our inaugural artist is David Brubeck (Born December 6, 1920) , who despite being only a decade short of a century is STILL TOURING AND COMPOSING. Most people are decomposing rather than composing at that age, so I think that is a particularly noteworthy feat; Mozart had been decomposing for 55 years by the time he was Brubeck’s age.
Brubeck is known for his use of unusual time signatures, as well as superimposing contrasting rhythms, meters and tonalities. His best known piece, “Take Five” was recorded in 5/4 time and is available on the top-selling jazz album, Time Out (1959). Other songs with strange time signatures recorded by Brubek include “Pick Up Sticks”, which is in 6/4 time, “Unsquare Dance” in 7/4 and “Blue Rondo à la Turk” in 9/8 (Also found on Time Out).