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" 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
Remember
Great
You
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" 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
Playing
You
Worst
" After the Second World War, I returned to California to study composition with Darius Milhaud, who wrote wonderful works like 'Le Boeuf sur le Toit' and 'La Cretion du Monde.' I especially enjoy his work for two pianos, 'Scaramouche.' "
Dave Brubeck
California
World
Work
" 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 gone because we were all so close. But I believe in the future and the tradition will go on. "
Dave Brubeck
Hard
Believe
Tradition
" 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
Man
More
Like
" 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
Me
Believe
Happy
" 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 years for me. And that was my herd. "
Dave Brubeck
Me
Cows
School
" If I told you all the people that have secretly told me I've influenced them, you'd never believe it, and you'll never see it in print, either. "
Dave Brubeck
See
People
Me
" We don't know the power that's within our own bodies. "
Dave Brubeck
Know
Within
Power
" My own Brubeck Institute in California is turning out fantastic young jazz players, and I know great things will happen. "
Dave Brubeck
Great
Jazz
California
" 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
Musicians
Freedom
Jazz
" 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
Thinking
Church
Growing Up
" If there's a deadline, I work late. If not, I like to have normal hours, and get up early and work. When things are going well, I hate to quit. And then I'll work 'till exhausted. "
Dave Brubeck
Late
Normal
Quit
" 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
Music
You
Beauty
" Jazz isn't dead yet. It's the underpinning of everything in this country. Whether it's a Broadway show, or fusion, or right on through classical music, if it's coming out of the U.S., it's not going to survive unless it's got some jazz influence. "
Dave Brubeck
Music
Influence
Jazz
" When you start out with goals - mine were to play polytonally and polyrhythmically - you never exhaust that. I started doing that in the 1940s. It's still a challenge to discover what can be done with just those two elements. "
Dave Brubeck
Doing
You
Two
" Concord, California was a great place to grow up. "
Dave Brubeck
Place
Great
California
" I have more energy at the end than I do at the beginning. You can be so beat up that you can scarcely walk on stage but when you get to the piano the excitement kicks in, you forget about being tired. "
Dave Brubeck
End
Beginning
Energy
" 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
Mistakes
Making Mistakes
Chance
" 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
Know
Me
Music
" 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
Democracy
Discipline
Freedom
" 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
Kitchen
You
Know
" The first choral music I remember hearing was Handel's 'Messiah' when the Mormon Tabernacle Choir broadcast it over the radio. "
Dave Brubeck
Music
Choir
Over
" I had the first integrated Army band in World War II. "
Dave Brubeck
Army
War
World
" 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
Listen
Play
Mother
" I knew even if I'm a cowboy, I'm going to be involved in jazz in some way. "
Dave Brubeck
Way
Cowboy
Going
" It's like a whole orchestra, the piano for me. "
Dave Brubeck
Me
Orchestra
Piano
" 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
Wonderful
Symphony
Want
" I'm always hoping for the nights that are inspired where you almost have an out of body experience. "
Dave Brubeck
You
Always
Body
" 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
Music
Best
Write
" What I want to happen is to be really creative, and to play something new in the improvisations, every time. "
Dave Brubeck
Play
Want
Creative