“The Gates of Justice,” Brubeck’s 1969 masterwork, gets revived with his sons in tow, and reopens a conversation Americans need to have.
‘They Damn Well Better Hear It’, I interviewed Brubeck at his Wilton, Connecticut, home.
I was pretty sure that’s what Dave Brubeck would have said in late February. “That’s exactly what he would say,” Darius, the eldest of Brubeck’s sons, told me in Los Angeles. We had all been invited by UCLA’s Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience, which had mounted performances ofat the university’s Royce Hall as well as at the Holman church; in between, the center hosted a day-long conference, “Music and Justice: A Dialogue Through Thought, Creativity and Music.
The first half of each concert in Los Angeles reframed the very words and deeds of that struggle through contemporary pieces, some of which were composed specifically for the event. The poetry of Langston Hughes formed texts for three works from composers Joel Thompson, Jared Jenkins, and Arturo O’Farrill . Hardest-hitting of all was “Dear Freedom Riders,” a piece composed by Diane White-Clayton, who is on the faculty of UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music.
At the conclusion of each concert, as an encore, the three Brubecks—Darius, Chris and Dan—returned to the stage to perform “Blue Rondo à La Turk,” one of their father’s best-known compositions, which displays his brilliance at floating a melody based on a 9-beat phrase atop what is essentially a 4/4 blues. Aside from their mastery was the sheer buoyancy of their joy, like brothers cutting loose on a favorite tune in their garage.
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