Artist: Dave Brubeck
Title: Blue Rondo A La Turk
Date: March 20, 2005
“Blue Rondo A La Turk” (as a title) is a not-so-subtle play on Mozart’s “Rondo Alla Turca”, and the music reflects this as well, providing a jazz meditation on Mozart’s famous piece. For me, however, the initial flight into the piece is all that’s needed to draw me in right away–it’s so addictively accented that it’s hard to resist.
It is perhaps ironic that I was first introduced to Dave Brubeck’s music through a cover of his most famous “Take Five” track performed by Tito Puente–a cover which takes the piece (written in 5/4 time, giving the double entendre to its title) and plays it in common (4/4) time. The effect of this was that the first time I heard a recording of Brubeck’s own quartet performing it, it felt wrong to me! I’m not a jazz listener as such; my knowledge of jazz is almost nonexistent and I have only seriously listened to a very few jazz musicians, but Brubeck attracted me right away because of his frequent use of varied time-signatures and rhythms in his compositions. This came as no surprise to me, once I found out that he was a pupil of Darius Milhaud (an amazing composer from the early part of the last century).
Leave a Reply