RIP Dave Brubeck

Photo by Jim Webber

I was waiting for a colleague to end a phone call today when I read the news.  On the day before what would have been his 92nd birthday, Dave Brubeck had died.

I went to my twitter list called 'jazz' and began to read through the 140 character or less tributes to the man.  Many who I follow, had played with the man.  It lifted my spirits to see the love expressed in the sadness of the news and the joy of having experienced the man.

Mosaic Woman and I went into our studios this evening and listened to two friends sharing stories, sharing pianos.  NPR's Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz with Dave Brubeck.  Read a bio and listen to the episode here.


  Tis the Season, rest in the beauty of his love of piano ~

jazz with strings

In the beginning... I was in college and opening myself up to new music in ways that had never happened before. One of the jazz LP's I bought was Charlie Parker playing with strings. To be clear, he was playing his sax, while he played music with folk playing string instruments other than guitar or bass. Here he is playing about something many of us are longing for these days

Then there was a desire to have a CD of Marian McPartland playing her own music. No easy link to the music on her CD, Silent Pool, but check out NPR's longest-running and most widely carried jazz program, Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz. The way you get that honor is to live a long life and to keep playing.

But probably my favored jazz with strings CD may be Clifford Brown, an amazing trumpet player who sadly died on the Pennsylvania Turnpike at a way too young age in 1956.

Here is Blue Moon from that session where he played with strings.

My mind is on these things because I am excited about what I plan to be a witness. Jazz pianist and composer Billy Childs has written a piece of music to be played by his 6 piece band along with the Ying Quartet (need some non-jazz). Montgomery County Community College tells me that this will be the regional premiere of the piece.

and this post of many links will end with one more, no string quartet, but Mr. Child's plays an appropriate tune for this moment.

classroom expectations and hopes

I expect the world from my students and myself each and everyday. I live with our failures to meet these expectations because my hopes remain. Last night at parents night, I tell those who enter my classroom about my hopes. Those parents, who don't venture in to what one student calls the Stratz Lair, have to be satisfied with the view from the sidewalk outside my window. Maybe they hear the jazz piano playing of Marian McPartland.

I see some linger looking at the aloes. Maybe they hear hope in my voice.


Early on I speak of hopes for a young man to fight off the OCD intensified fears which slows him down so much. My desire is for him to see that jumping into something, even if it turns out terribly, is a better life than being stuck in front of a blank physics assignment.

But most of the evening is spent with parents whose children attend one of my horticulture classes. I speak of the year they will experience, the career ed goals I will focus on, and I also answer a question expressed by one mother, "Is this the best place for my nearly-old-enough-to-graduate son to be?" I don't know for sure, so I say something like this.....

I would love for all of my students to develop the passion, skill, talent, strength, and luck to graduate into a job working with plants. But I would also be well pleased with them gardening at home, caring for an aloe in a sunny kitchen window, cooking with fresh peppers, or being stopped while walking by a patch of globe amaranths and say, 'how beautiful, I grew them once.' I hope that in experiencing horticulture they will learn that with compassion, life can flourish. By the end I have convinced myself and a parent or two that horticulture is far from a waste of time.

The parents leave. I turn off the jazz, say goodnight to some friends as we head to our cars, and head home.