Dave Brubeck Quotes

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Dave Brubeck

Profession : Musician

Birth : December 6, 1920

Jazz stands for freedom. It's supposed to be the voice of freedom: Get out there and improvise, and take chances, and don't be a perfectionist - leave that to the classical musicians.

Dave Brubeck

There's a way of playing safe, there's a way of using tricks and there's the way I like to play which is dangerously where you're going to take a chance on making mistakes in order to create something you haven't created before.

Dave Brubeck

My mother Elizabeth Ivey Brubeck was a pianist who studied with Dame Myra Hess and Tobias Matthey. As a child in California I used to listen to her play Chopin.

Dave Brubeck

Jazz is about freedom within discipline. Usually a dictatorship like in Russia and Germany will prevent jazz from being played because it just seemed to represent freedom, democracy and the United States.

Dave Brubeck

It's like a whole orchestra, the piano for me.

Dave Brubeck

I knew I wanted to write on religious themes when I was a GI in World War II. I saw and experienced so much violence that I thought I could express my outrage best with music.

Dave Brubeck

When I was first aware that I couldn't read music I didn't know I couldn't read because I could play the music that was in front of me.

Dave Brubeck

When I was 20, Shostakovich was my favorite composer. I still find his Fifth Symphony wonderful, with its outstanding themes and rhythms. That's the piece that made me want to be a classical composer.

Dave Brubeck

I knew even if I'm a cowboy, I'm going to be involved in jazz in some way.

Dave Brubeck

Do you think Duke Ellington didn't listen to Debussy? Louis Armstrong loved opera, did you know that? Name me a jazz pianist who wasn't influenced by European music!

Dave Brubeck

When you hear Bach or Mozart, you hear perfection. Remember that Bach, Mozart and Beethoven were great improvisers. I can hear that in their music.

Dave Brubeck

The first choral music I remember hearing was Handel's 'Messiah' when the Mormon Tabernacle Choir broadcast it over the radio.

Dave Brubeck

I started growing up in a hurry and taking a lot of the philosophy I'd heard from church as a kid a lot more seriously - especially the Ten Commandments - and wondering how 'Thou shalt not kill' could be so absolutely ignored. It took me until I was in my 40s to write what I was thinking as a young soldier.

Dave Brubeck

The worst thing about the life of a jazz musician on the road is getting to the gig. Once you're there and playing, it's marvelous.

Dave Brubeck

And there is a time where you can be beyond yourself. You can be better than your technique. You can be better than most of your usual ideas. And this is a whole other category that you can get into.

Dave Brubeck

I'm always hoping for the nights that are inspired where you almost have an out of body experience.

Dave Brubeck

I had the first integrated Army band in World War II.

Dave Brubeck

I'm beginning to understand myself. But it would have been great to be able to understand myself when I was 20 rather than when I was 82.

Dave Brubeck

It's like a whole orchestra, the piano for me. And also it's to me the greatest instrument. I shouldn't say that, but I believe that this is the only instrument I can really feel happy about playing.

Dave Brubeck

What I want to happen is to be really creative, and to play something new in the improvisations, every time.

Dave Brubeck