Artists Confidential: Dan Brubeck, Drummer, West Vancouver Memorial Library, Tuesday, Jan. 29 10: 30 a.m. Free admission.
Dan Brubeck Quartet, Kay Meek Centre, Friday, Feb. 1, 8 p.m. Tickets: $20 Box Office 604-981-6335.
IN most families the shared DNA is recognizable by a cleft chin or a common blood type. For the Brubeck family, the genetic lineage appears in a frequent propensity for unusual time signatures and a love of jazz that resides in the groove between a brassy assault and a quarter-to-three gin-soaked torch song.
Dan Brubeck, perhaps best known as the drummer in the Brubeck Brothers Quartet, is slated to bring his sound to West Vancouver next week.
While some musicians trace their love of rhythm and melody to the soundtrack of their childhood, Brubeck hearkens back more than 90 years to the days when his father was in utero, listening to the classical piano-playing of his own mother.
"He was in a crib right next to her and listened to music every day," Brubeck says of his father's infancy. "It's been completely in the family lineage for generations."
A composer and pianist, Dave Brubeck died last December at the age of 91.
When Dan was six years old, the world opened its ears to Time Out, which remains one of the most popular jazz albums ever recorded, including such standards as "Take Five" and "Blue Rondo a la Turk."
"There were a lot of times my dad was gone because he was on the road quite a bit," Dan says, recalling his childhood spent listening in on one of the most vibrant periods in the history of jazz. "We also would be hearing (Thelonious) Monk and Charles Mingus and be on tour with those guys, too."
Brubeck uses a tone of familiarity ordinarily reserved for a common acquaintance at the grocery store when describing the influence of saxophone master Cannonball Adderley and the personal kindness of drumming legend Buddy Rich.
Brubeck cites Joe Morello, the drummer in the Dave Brubeck Quartet, as the single musician who captured his fascination.
"My idol when I was young was Joe Morello," he says. "He could just play a drum roll with one hand."
But while Morello was quick, he also had a musicality to his approach that put him ahead of many of his contemporaries, according to Brubeck.
"It seemed like a lot of drummers back then put a lot of emphasis on . . . 'How fast is he?'" he says. "Like they were gunslingers or something."
For Brubeck, the line between good and great drummers is often found in a willingness to melt into the song, holding those brilliant outbursts for just the right times.
"Playing with dynamics is important, and kind of picking your moments," he says.
Now approaching 60, Brubeck recalls his parents' reaction when he decided to become a professional musician.
"They definitely let us all know that playing music wasn't going to be easy. They also knew that being happy was a big part of stuff," he says.
For Brubeck, drumming was a channel for his abundance of energy, but while he remains largely uninhibited with sticks in hand, choosing an artistic life has meant years of measured spending.
"It's a bit of a grind to keep everything going financially. Just doing music is close to impossible to survive doing that unless you got your hands in a lot of different pies," Brubeck notes. "You learn to be kind of un-stable as a way of life."
Speaking to the North Shore News from Nelson, B.C., Brubeck reflects on his father's legacy.
Dan recently took the stage in a packed auditorium show that served as a memorial for his father.
Much of the drummer's career has been spent both honouring and reinventing his father's music.
"This band at Kay Meek is going to be doing a lot of my dad's stuff and maybe a few original things and things that I've written," he says.
While Dan has mainly specialized in instrumental jazz, his own quartet is planning to unveil some of the seldom-heard vocals to Dave Brubeck's classic melodies.
"I thought, 'What could we do that's completely different than these other groups?'" he says.
Adam Foster, the quartet's singer and bass player, often reminded Dan that he knew the vocals on many of the Brubeck tunes.
"One night, I was like, 'Yeah go ahead and sing it,' and my jaw kind of dropped," Dan recalls.
jshepherd@nsnews.com
