REVIEW: The Darius Brubeck Quartet: Live in Poland — panache wins over pastiche

The FT’s mike Hobart writes, “The pianist and his band pay homage to Dave Brubeck’s legacy with sensitivity while avoiding mimicry.”

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Pianist Darius Brubeck treads the line between playing up and playing down his late father’s legacy with sensitivity and panache. Classics are noted — this live set, featuring the expat American’s UK band, ends with “Take Five” and includes Dave Brubeck’s delightful “In Your Own Sweet Way” — but mimicry is avoided and, with Dave O’Higgins a grainy lead sax, so too is pastiche. The album was recorded in 2018 in Poland, at Poznan’s Blue Note Jazz Club, on the last night of a tour marking the end of the first world war and Polish independence. It was also the 60th anniversary of the Dave Brubeck Quartet becoming the first American jazz group to tour behind the Iron Curtain. As Darius notes, the tour was suffused with political meaning, and both audience and band go the extra mile.

The set opens with “Earthrise”, a modal blues in 7/4 that includes a feature for the woody strength of Matt Ridley’s bass. The highlight is saxophonist O’Higgins firing up “Sea of Troubles” with a neat vibrato and echoes of the blues; “Take Five”, taken at a trot, moves from vamp to swing and takes the set to a peak.

★★★☆☆

Live in Poland’ is released by Ubuntu Music