By JAMES D. WATTS JR. Scene Writer on Dec 7, 2012, at 6:31 PM Updated on 12/07 at 6:31 PM
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It would show up regularly in my mailbox at the Tulsa World -- the Dave Brubeck Quartet Newsletter, chronicling the seemingly inexhaustible Brubeck as he traveled the world making music.
I ended up on the mailing list in 1994, after I had the chance to spend the better part of an afternoon in Brubeck's company. He was in town to perform at the Jazz on Greenwood festival, and had graciously consented to what was supposed to be a 15-minute interview.
We ended up talking for nearly 90 minutes, and when I mentioned the time, and how I knew he had other commitments to attend, Brubeck would simply give me a broad grin and wave one of his capacious hands -- hands that gave him a reach across the keyboard that few pianists could match -- and say, "Oh, I'm having a great time."
I remember how animated he became when I mentioned how much I liked a tune from what was then his latest album. "I so want my wife to write some words for `Who Will Take Care of Me?' " he said. "I think that tune just cries out for lyrics. There are so many singers I can just hear singing that song."
When I spoke with Brubeck, he was 73. He would continue on for two more decades. His death on Wednesday was the day before his 92nd birthday.
In our conversation, he said, "I don't even like to think of stopping.
I'd be bored to death otherwise. You see, the most fun for me in the world is playing and writing music - especially writing. And you have to fight for the time to do these things."
Brubeck definitely made the time. He was as prolific a composer as he was a tireless performer, capable of taking avant-garde concepts and transforming them into music that had the immediacy and accessibility of a pop songs without compromising its complexity.
He also wrote a good deal of sacred music, such as the Christmas choral work "La Fiesta de la Posada," which Tulsa's Signature Symphony has performed in the past, or "The Gates of Justice," which a local church had performed a few months prior to our conversation.
"Yes, I heard about that," Brubeck said at the time. "For some reason, there were about three performances of `The Gates of Justice' within the
space of about a month last year. One was put together by a Catholic church in St. Paul, done with three choirs - one from the Catholic church, one from the black community and one from the Jewish community. Which is wonderful, because that was why that piece was written, to try and bring people together during those years of turmoil."
Brubeck returned to Tulsa two years later, performing with the Signature Symphony at the Brady Theater. That concert included the premiere of a piece Brubeck had finished just days before, which I described this way:
"It was the Chorale movement from a work for string orchestra, and it was breathtaking. It called to mind Barber's Adagio for Strings, but with some profound. Brubeck's Chorale opens the same sort of simmering
tension, with the violins and violas crafting a soft, flowing melody atop an agitated rhythmic figure in the low strings. But whereas the Barber ends with a sense of despair and loss, Brubeck's Chorale resolves into a kind of poignant sweetness, a peace not of desolation by of profound hope. Again, the turning point is Brubeck's forceful piano solo, which built into a series of thunderclap chords, like questions shouted at sky. And the answer came in a soothing melody from the strings. If this was just one movement, then personally I can hardly wait to hear the complete work."
Toward the end of our conversation Brubeck talked briefly about what "retirement" might be for him.
"What I'd like to be able to do would be to spend my mornings writing music, then spend the afternoons being human," Brubeck said with a smile. "You know, spending time with my family, my children and grandchildren. That would be the sort of `retirement' I could live with."
The truth is, Dave Brubeck spent his whole life being human -- using his music to touch, to celebrate, to strengthen, to soothe, all the things that are best about the human being. That is why he will be so greatly missed.
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