Chris Brubeck talks about jazz, rock, his famous dad and what he’ll play in Charlotte
Wherever he goes, Chris Brubeck carries three heavy things along: His Rickenbacker fretless bass guitar, his bass trombone, and his father’s reputation. He bears them gracefully and gladly.
Dave Brubeck became a pioneer with the immensely popular “Time Out” album, using his quartet to sweep away Americans’ ignorance about jazz and resistance to it in the 1950s.
Chris, a composer-performer like his dad, has sewn seeds on the land Dave cleared. He’s done it in ways Dave didn’t imagine, with an ever-changing hybrid of jazz and rock and folk and anything else that enters his fertile mind. He veers from writing a classical concerto for three violinists to the gently mocking, Jimmy Buffett-like tune “Didn’t We Make it at Woodstock?”
His concerts with Ziad Rabie’s musicians Oct. 4 at the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art will offer jazz in various forms, with an emphasis on Dave’s work. (Next year is dad’s centenary.) Chris Brubeck heard about the Bechtler when his pal Peter Rubino, who specializes in making clay sculptures in front of an audience, made one of Dave Brubeck there as Rabie and crew played.
“I’ll meet Ziad and the others for the first time a couple of days before the concert,” says Brubeck. “Jazz is the easiest genre to play with musicians you don’t know. I was in a club in Russia where people came up and said, ‘Can we play (Dave’s) “In Your Own Sweet Way” with you?’ They didn’t speak English, but they spoke jazz.
“If you’re a good musician, you really listen: The tune takes a different shape, and suddenly you’re creating a piece of art. I’m orchestrating a 45-minute piece for chorus and orchestra, writing down every note and phrase marking. It will be satisfying to see that become a reality in the concert hall, but I create equally valid music by just showing up with good musicians.”
Absorbing it all
So how does this quicksilver musician define himself at 67? He blows out a long sigh.
“I don’t know, exactly. Maybe by describing how other people have defined me. (Boston Pops) conductor Keith Lockhart commissioned me to write ‘Interplay for Three Violins and Orchestra’ for classical violin, jazz violin and Celtic fiddle. He said, ‘We were trying to think who in the hell would know all these styles from personal experience, and the only person we could think of was you.’
“As incongruous as this sounds, I have written songs for (opera mezzo-soprano) Frederica von Stade and cowritten with (bluesman) Bobby Womack, who has the most unbelievably dark sound. I grew up in a jazz world, my generation loved rock ‘n’ roll, and I studied classical music at Interlochen with all these young geniuses. It’s all been absorption and happenstance for me.”
From rock to jazz
By 25, he’d rocked with a couple of groups: New Heavenly Blue cut albums for RCA and Atlantic subsidiary labels, and the funk–rock–jazz unit Sky King got the attention of Memphis producer/guitarist Steve Cropper. Brubeck co-wrote most of its songs and sat in with the Tower of Power horns on a recording session. Yet those youthful forays were no generational rebellion.
“I just decided to go in another direction,” he says. “My dad did a great thing: a whole jazz album of odd time signatures and all original material. His innovations with ‘Time Out’ were as bold as Jimi Hendrix’s with ‘Are You Experienced?’ But I decided to do something innovative in rock ‘n’ roll. I had two bands, paid the dues, got the reviews – the Chicago Sun-Times called Sky King ‘the thinking man’s funk’ – but that was (short-lived).”
Back in the fold
He found himself back in the Brubeck fold in the late ’70s, playing bass in his father’s group. He later formed the Brubeck Brothers Quartet with Daniel Brubeck on drums and the Triple Play trio with guitarist Joel Brown and Peter “Madcat” Ruth on mouth instruments and percussion. The latter gave Chris Brubeck a chance to find out what blues, Bach and his dad’s “Blue Rondo a la Turk” sounded like with a harmonica.
Loyalties run deep with Brubeck: He played with Ruth in his rock bands and occasionally in Dave Brubeck’s group. “My father said — in the nicest way — ‘He plays the harmonica so damn well he steals the show. We’ll be better off without him.’ He left that group, but we’ve worked together in Triple Play for 30 years.”
The composer
Personal harmony also means a lot to Chris Brubeck. He once told an interviewer the trait he deplored most about himself was “the inability to be confrontational,” a rare quality for a musician. He has been married for more than two decades to Tish Brubeck, who manages the Brubeck Brothers and Triple Play and co-founded Blue Forest Records with her husband.
He’s restless only when he picks up a blank sheet of music paper. A guitar concerto for Sharon Isbin, a bass trombone concerto for himself or a set of folk-like children’s songs might emerge.
“My dad told me Stravinsky said, ‘Composition is selective improvisation.’ If you’re a composer, you select the phrase that’s most worthy, but they all come from the core of your subconscious. I’m not a religious person — kind of a spiritual person, I think — but I literally pray for the great spirit of music to somehow bless me with a connection to it.”
Jazz at the Bechtler: Chris Brubeck
When: 6 p.m. and 8:15 p.m. Oct. 4.
Where: Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, 420 S. Tryon St.
Tickets: $16 general admission.
Details: 704-353-9200 or bechtler.org.
This story is part of an Observer underwriting project with the Thrive Campaign for the Arts, supporting arts journalism in Charlotte.
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This story was originally published September 25, 2019 at 10:23 AM.