Quotes by Dave Brubeck

About Dave Brubeck:

David Warren "Dave" Brubeck is known for employing unusual time signatures, and superimposing contrasting rhythms, meters, and tonalities.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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

We don't know the power that's within our own bodies.

Dave Brubeck

I played a lot of sports and it's the plays in basketball that weren't worked out that are the ones that are just fantastic that you remember. We don't know the power that's within our own bodies.

Dave Brubeck

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

Dave Brubeck

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

Many people don't understand how disciplined you have to be to play jazz... And that is really the idea of democracy - freedom within the Constitution or discipline. You don't just get out there and do anything you want.

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

That's the beauty of music. You can take a theme from a Bach sacred chorale and improvise. It doesn't make any difference where the theme comes from; the treatment of it can be jazz.

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 dad was the manager at the 45,000-acre ranch, but he owned his own 1,200-acre ranch, and I owned four cattle that he gave to me when I graduated from grammar school, from the eighth grade. And those cows multiplied, and he kept track of them for y...

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

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

Concord, California was a great place to grow up.

Dave Brubeck

I was always very aware of drummers. My oldest brother Henry was a drummer, and he drummed on everything in the house from the kitchen sink to stovepipes. He was the first drummer in the Gil Evans Orchestra, so you've got to know how great he was.

Dave Brubeck

My own Brubeck Institute in California is turning out fantastic young jazz players, and I know great things will happen.

Dave Brubeck

I got a poster from Columbia Records, and there's Miles Davis, Charlie Mingus, Ellington, Count Basie - everybody in that poster has died, I'm the only one left. And great players like Paul Desmond and Gerry Mulligan, it's hard to believe they're gon...

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

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

Dave Brubeck

I wanted to be like my father, who was a cattle man and a rodeo roper. And that was - he was my hero, and I wanted to be more like him.

Dave Brubeck

I used to take my mother to Yosemite. When I turned 14, I got my driver's license, and that's where she'd want to go, so I'd go take her there for two weeks.

Dave Brubeck

Author Bio

  • NameDave Brubeck
  • DescriptionAmerican Jazz pianist and composer
  • AliasesDavid Warren "Dave" Brubeck; David Warren Brubeck
  • BornDecember 6, 1920
  • DiedDecember 5, 2012
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionPianist; Composer; Songwriter; Bandleader; Jazz Musician
  • AwardsNational Medal Of Arts; Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award