Blue Rondo A La Turk

Jazz concert features Triple Play with Dave Brubeck

The annual SaratogaArtsFest weekend is a friend to jazz, commissioning a major jazz artist to perform each year. This year's four-day, multiple-venue event starts today, and this time it will be a family affair of the highest order: The group Triple Play, which includes Chris Brubeck , performs Friday night at Skidmore College and a special guest joining the trio will be Chris's father, 90-year-old jazz legend Dave Brubeck.

The audience can expect to hear some seminal stuff of the elder Brubeck, such as "Blue Rondo a la Turk," as well as some jazz chestnuts.

Dave Brubeck has four musician sons, and Chris has toured with his father as part of the famed Dave Brubeck Quartet . He also leads a band with his brother Danny on drums, aptly called the Brubeck Brothers , a straight-ahead mainstream jazz band.

Triple Play is different, and it has played with Dave Brubeck before.

Chris mostly plays bass and trombone, and with Triple Play he also plays piano at times with bandmates Peter "Madcat" Ruth on harmonica and some percussion, and guitarist Joel Brown . All three also sing.

Brown is senior artist-in-residence at Skidmore College and resides in Saratoga Springs. And his father, Frank, a noted clarinetist, will also sit in with Triple Play.

Despite all the family connections and his famous father, Chris Brubeck stresses that the concert will be a Triple Play gig.

"It's a very surprising band," he said of Triple Play. "The Brubeck Brothers is clearly a jazz group. There's no question what genre we are. But Triple Play -- if you can imagine the area where blues, folk music, acoustic funk and jazz overlaps, that's what that group's all about. Everyone sings, which makes it real different. We also don't have a drummer in the group, per se. What we do have is "Madcat" Ruth, who's really one of the best harmonica players in the world. ... He plays the high hat (cymbal) with his foot a lot. That's our drum set.

"The rest of it, the rhythm is provided with the rhythmical way that Joel plays guitar and I play the bass. 'Madcat' either huck-a-pucks on the harmonica or plays jaw harp sometimes. I'm not saying he sounds like a drum, but he functions very rhythmically."

The younger Brubeck's association with Ruth goes back about 40 years and with Brown about 20. Ruth even played in the mid-1970s with Two Generations of Brubeck, which included Dave with sons Chris, Danny and Darius Brubeck.

Brown played with Chris Brubeck in a trio with Bill Crofut, a master banjo player who died in 1999. Among its accomplishments, that trio recorded the album "Bach to Brubeck" (Koch International Classics, 2000) with the London Symphony Orchestra .

A Love Of Jazz: Blue Rondo A La Turk

"Blue Rondo A La Turk" first appeared on the 1959 Dave Brubeck album "Time Out" which featured songs written in unusual time signatures. This song is written in 9/8 and the solo sections are in 4/4.  While 9/8 sounds mind bendingly complex at first glance, it can be broken down as 1-2,1-2,1-2,1-2-3 (or as some people have already noticed - taco, taco, taco, burrito). When Dave Brubeck received a presidential award from then President and avid jazz fan Bill Clinton, he asked Clinton what his favourite Brubeck Quartet song was. Replying that it was Blue Rondo and even starting to sing the melody at the presentation, Brubeck was so impressed that he sent an autographed copy of the sheet music to the White House, which is now hanging in the Clinton's music room. I sometimes ask myself, what is jazz? I think Louis Armstrong sums it up best: " If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know." The old joke amongst musicians is that it's better than sex, and it lasts longer! What I do know, is that jazz has been a big part of my life for a long time, and in this blog, I would like to share some of my favourite things with you, so read on, and let's explore the rich and complex world of jazz!

Blue rondo a la Turk

Blue Rondo a la Turk

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