THE DAVE BRUBECK QUARTET
NEW WINE
[1] Summer Music (Dave Brubeck)
Derry Music (BMI)
Arranged by Darius Brubeck
[2] Blue Rondo a la Turk (Dave Brubeck)
Derry Music (BMI)
Arranged by Darius Brubeck
[3] Koto Song (Dave Brubeck)
Derry Music (BMI)
Arranged by Russell Gloyd
[4] New Wine (Dave Brubeck)
Derry Music (BMI)
Arranged by Dave Brubeck
[5] Lullaby (Dave Brubeck)
Derry Music (BMI)
Arranged by Dave Brubeck
[6] Out of the Way of the People (Dave Brubeck)
Derry Music (BMI)
Arranged by Dave Brubeck
[7] Take the "A" Train (Billy Strayhorn)
Mills Music, Inc. (ASCAP)
Arranged by Dave Brubeck
Dave Brubeck, piano
Bill Smith, clarinet
Chris Brubeck, electric bass
Randy Jones, drums
The Montreal International Jazz Festival Orchestra
Russell Gloyd, conductor
The Montreal International Jazz Festival, according to Leonard Feather and many other jazz connoisseurs, is the finest festival of its kind. The festive atmosphere permeates the entire city, with local and international jazz artists playing in every concert hall and theatre, on the streets, and in the hotels and nightclubs. When the producers of the festival, Alain Simard and Andre Menard, invited the Dave Brubeck Quartet to perform, for the first time in the festival's history, a concert with members of the Montreal Symphony, we accepted the honor with eager anticipation. We carefully chose, with our conductor, Russell Gloyd, a program that we thought appropriate for a jazz festival audience. After three hours of rehearsal with an orchestra the group had never seen before, the concert was televised live on the CBC. Some months later when I saw a video of that broadcast, I was so excited about what I heard that I vowed that someday, somehow, that music would be on a recording. And here is it. Live. Direct from the sound track. An album we titled New Wine.
the innate style of the other. The lines of demarcation for each field seemed, in our minds if not in fact, to be more clearly defined. Classical musicians had almost given up their heritage of improvisation, a legacy handed down to them through Bach, Handel, Beethoven, Mozart, Buxtehude, Liszt, Chopin, and others, centuries prior.
Jazz musicians, too, had strayed from their roots in improvisatory ensemble, moving toward more structured arrangements for big bands, completely written except for the improvised virtuoso solos.
In the early '50s, when we pioneered the then-rare combination of jazz and symphony performances, collaboration was a much more difficult task than it is today. Both idioms at that time were less adaptable to
I hope you will allow the old man to reminisce. Things have changed a lot from 30 years ago when we first performed with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic. The news of his death brought back to me a flood of incredible memories. Bernstein, who liked to play jazz piano himself, showed great respect for the Quartet (Paul Desmond, Joe Morello, Eugene Wright, and me). He gave us three full rehearsals, followed by three consecutive performances in Carnegie Hall, one of which was broadcast nationally. We then proceeded to the recording studio staffed by the best engineers. With editing, replays, and retakes, one three-hour session guided by Leonard Bernstein produced Dialogues for Jazz Combo and Orchestra, a
work composed by my brother, Howard.
Gone are those days forever. Orchestras must achieve much more in much less time in today's performance schedule. However, nowadays, most of the orchestral musicians are familiar with jazz, and many jazz musicians are classically trained. Witness, for example, Wynton Marsalis.
Only occasionally do we call in a jazz lead trumpeter to save the embouchure of the classical first chair trumpet, or as we did in Berlin combine the symphony orchestra with the jazz-oriented Berlin radio orchestra. The members of my group (Bill Smith, Randy Jones, Chris Brubeck, and conductor Russell Gloyd) are at home in both fields.
When we are rehearsing with an orchestra, often young clarinetists come up to me and ask, “Is your Bill Smith the same as William O. Smith? I've studied his method books and clarinet pieces.” “Yes, indeed,” I answer. “He is one and the same.” Bill, as a composer, has won such prestigious prizes as the Prix de Paris, the Prix de Rome, and several Guggenheim grants. He has recorded with such jazz greats as Jim Hall, Shelly Manne, and Red Norvo. He was a Fellow with the Fromm Chamber Players at Tanglewood at the same time he was recording albums with me. Presently, Bill is Director of Contemporary Music at the University of Washington, Seattle. My son, Chris, has been classically trained as a trombonist and approaches his fretless electric bass as if it were an acoustic double bass. He composes and arranges for symphony orchestras and choruses. Randy Jones is an avid collector of classical recordings, and l believe this influence is reflected in the form and structure of his drum solo on Out of the Way. Russell Gloyd's well-honed technique, learned from conducting shows in the pit, as well as being classically trained, accomplishes in one rehearsal programs which realistically should demand much more preparation time.
All of the pieces chosen for this program are from the Quartet's jazz repertoire. Summer Music, which was a favorite of my son Darius when he played in my group, was arranged by him for orchestra. When he heard the video of the Montreal concert, he remarked, “l don't care if that piece is ever played again. I've heard it the way it should be played.” Darius also arranged Blue Rondo a la Turk, a piece in 9/8 l wrote for the experimental time-signature album, Time Out. Koto Song has been performed by us over and over again, but this is the first recording with orchestra. Russell Gloyd
wrote the arrangement. I originally wrote the piece for the album Jazz Impressions of Japan. In my piano solo you will hear reference to an old Japanese folk song. A more recent composition, New Wine, comes from an orchestral section of my oratorio, The Voice of the Holy Spirit. Lullaby is an improvisatory section from my Christmas cantata, La Fiesta de la Posada. Out of the Way, in which Randy Jones swings the 60piece orchestra as he used to drive the Maynard Ferguson Big Band, comes from my cantata The Gates of Justice. Our encore, Billy Stray horn's Take the “A” Train, is a salute to my jazz mentor, Duke Ellington.
I am writing this on the eve of my departure for a five-week European tour, culminating in London with three SRO performances with the London Symphony Orchestra. In these concerts, the great jazz violinist, Stephane Grappelli, and four of my sons will join with my current Quartet and the London Symphony to celebrate my 70th birthday. I hope you, too, will raise a glass with me when you taste, for the first time, New Wine.
Dave Brubeck
October 21, 1990
Recorded (multi-track analog) in performance on July 3, 1987, during the Festival International de Jazz Montreal under the direction of Alain Simard and Andre Menard, at the Place des Arts, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Engineering by Marcel Gounin, for Karisma Recording, assisted by Paul Sarault and Charles Ethier
Mixed and mastered (Sony 1630) on October 17 and 18, 1990 at BMG Studios, New York City;
Engineered by Joe Lopes and Jay Newland, assisted by Suzy Fink
PRODUCED BY RUSSELL GLOYD AND JOHN SNYDER
Special thanks to Mark Goldman, Alain Simard, Andre Menard, and Daniel Harvey
Cover Design: John Berg
Cover Photo: Davis Freeman
