Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, November 26, 1995                   TAG: 9511280042
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MARY CAMPBELL ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WESTPORT, CONN.                                 LENGTH: Long

DAVE BRUBECK PROVES HE'S A TIRELESS JAZZ MAN

Happy birthday, Dave Brubeck.

You'll be 75 years old Dec. 6, and you're a jazz man in a hurry.

At the piano, you are the master of time. You change tempo at will. Your compositions blend as many as four rhythms simultaneously. But when your hands fall from the keyboard, time is rushing at you. There is so much left to do.

There are the old quartet pieces, such as Paul Desmond's ``Take Five,'' that you've played so many times, never the same way twice, without exhausting the possibilities. ``There's no limit to the number of ways of doing it,'' you say. ``Think how unlimited snowflakes are. There's always a different way to play.''

There are pieces commissioned by the Pittsburgh Symphony and the Concord, Mass., Choral Society that must be completed. You showed a new part of the symphony piece to your son Chris the other day. Chris says, ``It's really swinging.''

There are the unfinished bits of music, scores of them stored in binders in your studio, that demand to be finished. But how can you get back to them with all the new music life keeps inspiring you to write?

When you were a child, the gaits of the horses on your father's cattle ranch in California inspired a multitude of opposing rhythms. Years later, a snatch of 9/8 rhythm overheard on an Istanbul street inspired ``Blue Rondo a la Turk.'' And now, sitting in your car at the Westport train station for a quick interview - because there is no time for a long one - you suddenly point out the windshield. ``Look at the birds right there,'' you say, their song suggesting a melody. These days, such inspiration comes more than ever before.

You feel like you're playing as well as ever, too, despite a disease, Dupuytren's contracture, that would pull the fingers of your right hand into a claw if it weren't under control. The only sign of it is a rare mistake with the little finger of your right hand.

You are recording more music than ever. Your new recording for Telarc, ``Young Lions & Old Tigers,'' includes 11 duets, the rhythm of each original piece inspired by the names of the partners.

And you'll do 85 concerts this year, six weeks of them one-nighters. The bypass surgery six years ago is just a memory.

``There is so much to do,'' you say, ``and I never know what the next phone call is going to be. It might be something I really want to do. I have to figure out how I'm going to find the time.''

Others might find a 75th birthday an occasion to look back over a lifetime of achievement, but you haven't the time for such an indulgence.

Chris calls you ``a real, original American musician who did a lot of different things,'' but adds that you are ``too humble to think of that.'' He says you never seem to think about your legacy, about whether people will always play and listen to your music.

Four of your sons, all fine musicians in their own right, think about it, though. Chris, Dan and Matthew plan to play your music and some of their own with orchestras around the country. And Dan has just made a recording with Bill Crofut and Frederica von Stade honoring you as a composer and their mother, Iola, your wife of 53 years, as a lyricist.

You have written so much music, including 200 tunes for the quartet, two ballet scores and 10 longer religious pieces. You think you have made 115 recordings, although you have lost count; and that doesn't include the bootleg copies.

You have been a true innovator of polyrhythms and polytonality in jazz.

Pianist Marian McPartland, who has known you since the 1950s and plays some of your compositions, says you have ``a thread of originality unlike any other piano player.'' She says you ``get a nice groove going and then destroy it,'' that you make the music exciting.

Chris finds your originality an undying source of inspiration. ``I saw my father become successful doing something everybody told him was nuts,'' he says. ``He was such an example.''

You have been one of the great international ambassadors for jazz, America's greatest indigenous art form. ``The Real Ambassadors,'' you entitled a musical you wrote for Louis Armstrong.

You have been a great popularizer, lifting jazz out of the smoky club scene and bringing it to mass audiences at college campuses. You always drew huge audiences and you still do. At a benefit concert in Detroit in November, many had to be turned away.

Your originality and huge popularity provoked the critics at times, especially after Time magazine, in 1954, made you the first jazz musician to grace its cover, and after ``Time Out'' became the first jazz recording to sell a million copies. One critic, reviewing a polyrhythmic performance by the Dave Brubeck Quartet, complained that the group couldn't even play in time together.

Chris thinks your name should be spoken in the same breath as composers Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland. He hopes you ``keep living longer and longer; there's more and more appreciation'' of you and your work.

So, on Dec. 6, there is a lot to celebrate. How will you mark the day? By performing, of course. Along with saxophonist Bobby Militello and your four musician sons, you will perform in your Christmas oratorio, ``La Fiesta de la Posada,'' in Vienna, one of several performances you plan in London and Austria that week.

In London, there will be a party with all six of your children, including Darius, a keyboardist who lives in South Africa, Michael, a horse trainer who writes poems you set to music, and Catherine, an illustrator. Your nine grandchildren will be there, too. Your only disappointment is that your two great-grandchildren cannot make it.

Happy birthday, dear Dave. Happy birthday to you.