the swinging debut of Dave Brubeck in the Netherlands
In 1958 the Dave Brubeck Quartet performed at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. All these years later, a French label releases recordings of it on CD and LP.
Michiel de Ruyter, jazz critic of The parole, was there when pianist Dave Brubeck made his Dutch concert debut on February 26, 1958. He was not very impressed, he wrote the next day. That Brubeck might be technically a very gifted pianist, but what he did had little to do with jazz.
De Vara was also present and made radio recordings. 65 years later, they are now appearing on CD and LP. It seems to be a typical project of the Netherlands Jazz Archive, which has been publishing recordings of historical jazz concerts on Dutch soil for years, but Debut in the Netherlands 1958 is a release of the French record label The Lost Recordings. That is the same interest for the jazz past, but for the whole of Europe.
Chilled game
De Ruyter was very strong in his opinion of the concert by the Dave Brubeck Quartet, as a contemporary acquaintance learns. You can hear that the pianist has a classical background, but there is certainly swinging. And saxophonist Paul Desmond’s cool playing is beautiful. For whom on the CD Take Five misses: Brubeck ‘only’ released that in 1959.
Jazz
Dave Brubeck Quartet
Debut in the Netherlands 1958
(The Lost Recordings)