In his seven-decade career, Dave Brubeck was an artistic and a commercial success, a pianist and composer who expanded the musical landscape and who crossed other borders as one of the world's foremost ambassadors of jazz.
He had an inventive style that brought international music into the jazz mainstream, but he was more than a musical innovator: He was an American original.
Mr. Brubeck died Wednesday at a hospital in Norwalk, Conn., one day before his 92nd birthday. His manager, Russell Gloyd, said Mr. Brubeck was on his way to a regular checkup with his cardiologist when his heart gave out.
Brubeck had a career that spanned almost all American jazz since World War II. He formed The Dave Brubeck Quartet in 1951 and was the first modern jazz musician to be pictured on the cover of Time magazine— on Nov. 8, 1954 — and he helped define the swinging, smoky rhythms of 1950s and '60s club jazz.
Brubeck is quoted as saying
"When you start out with goals — mine were to play polytonally and polyrhythmically — you never exhaust that," Brubeck told The Associated Press in 1995. "I started doing that in the 1940s. It's still a challenge to discover what can be done with just those two elements."
Explore his Web Site here.
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