Seton Hall University - Galleon Yearbook (South Orange, NJ)

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an interview DAVE BRUBECK by Tony Carusone When Dave Brubeck came to Seton Hall University he brought with him a legendary fame uncon- tested throughout the history of jazz music. This unbelievably gifted in- dividual has set more precedents through the jazz idiom, and has been involved in more variations of this modality than just about anyone else in his field. With him came a new breed of Brubeck style and composition, en- titled Two Generations of Brubeck and composed mostly of Dave Bru- beck ' s sons. Also included in the night ' s entertainment was the Darius Brubeck Ensemble, which strays away from the traditional jazz pat- terns and yet retains its impact, var- iations and fundamental structure. The following is an interview con- ducted by the Galleon Yearbook in anticipation of the night ' s perform- ance. GALLEON: I ' d like to find out why you chose jazz over other types of music, and how you became inter- ested in it. BRUBECK: I was born into a fam- ily of musicians and my oldest brother, twelve years older than myself, had a dance band, jazz band. He played with Gil Evans, a famous arranger-composer, and he had a job with a band called Del Courtney, which most people on this coast don ' t remember, which is a very big band around San Francisco and they used to rehearse at my house, in my mother and father ' s house, so I heard jazz from the time I was a little kid. And I heard class- ical music too. GALLEON: So you were in the midst of it all, both classical and jazz music. BRUBACK: I was born right into all kinds of music. GALLEON: What is it like, com- paring studio sessions to live per- formances? Not in terms of the au- dience, but do you perform on the spot innovation in lieu of a written score during studio sessions, or is that simply restricted to live per- formances? BRUBECK: We do it both places. GALLEON: You don ' t follow any kind of musical score, strictly en- forced. BRUBECK: Never. And it ' s easier to do something really great in front of an audience if it ' s a good night. If it ' s a bad night, it ' s on tape and it ' s that way forever. Whereas in the studio if you didn ' t like it you could do it again. You do something completely different, but it can be done again whereas you are stuck with the live concert forever and most of the albums I like the best were live. GALLEON: What happens if dur- ing a live performance one of the band members makes a mistake which is easily recognizable, do you keep playing and hope that no one notices it or do you adapt your theme to the error? BRUBECK: You hear it for the next 20 years, first of all. Most of the time there ' s nothing that goes too wrong that ' s noticeable, you know there ' s bound to be a mistake or two in a live concert, but I prefer that to trying to get everything real- ly perfect because even if there ' s a classical concert there will be mis- takes where everything is written, but you try to go for the feeling, the feeling of the audience and it ' s us- ually more of an emotional per- formance in front of an audience. GALLEON: How do you feel when you perform; are you very aware of the audience or are you so much involved in the music that the audi- ence becomes separate, and almost second nature, to the task at hand in your mind? BRUBECK: No, you are aware of everything. Like I ' m aware that the sound tonight isn ' t going to be good. GALLEON: You mean acousti- cally? BRUBECK: Yes, in the hall. I al- ready know that. The piano isn ' t going to sound ideal to me and yet if the audience is good they will compensate for that. You see what I mean? For instance, if I were to record in this room, with this piano, and with no one here I can tell you I ' d hate it. Later on the audience might compensate for the bad qual- ity of the room. GALLEON: So the audience plays a very big part in your outlook on performance. BRUBECK: Oh, yes, the most im- portant part is that audience. That piano can be horrible, it ' s a great piano incidentally, it could be hor- rible, though, everything wrong; the acoustics wrong, the lighting wrong, every physical thing you can name. But if the audience was right, and with you, you would very easily overcome all that. Now in a studio you would never overcome all that. GALLEON: How do you feel about the contemporary rock scene. 9