About Dave Brubeck
David Warren (Dave) Brubeck (born December 6, 1920 in Concord, California) is an American jazz pianist who has written a number of jazz standards, including In Your Own Sweet Way and The Duke. Brubeck's style ranges from refined to bombastic, reflecting his mother's attempts at classical training and his improvisational skills. Much of his music employs unusual time signatures.
His long-time musical partner, alto saxophonist Paul Desmond, wrote what is arguably the quartet's most famous piece, Take Five (which is in 5/4 time). Brubeck experimented with time signatures through much of his career, recording Pick Up Sticks in 6/4, Unsquare Dance in 7/4, and Blue Rondo A La Turk in 9/8, an experimentation begun with his attempts to put music to the odd rhythms generated by various machines around him on his parents' cattle ranch in a small town in the western United States. The title of Blue Rondo A La Turk is a play on Mozart's Rondo alla Turca: Allegretto from his Piano Sonata No. 11, and the 9/8 metre of traditional Turkish music, the country in which the band was touring when the tune was written.