Postlude (based on themes from 'Where is God'")

Dave Brubeck?!? ORGAN music?!? That CAN'T be correct!!!

Well, it IS!

Now, if you're "old enough" to know who Dave Brubeck is, you have reason to wonder! If you don't, let me tell you a little about this exceptionally talented guy!

David "Dave" Brubeck (December 6, 1920 – December 5, 2012) was an American jazz pianist and composer, considered to be one of the foremost exponents of "cool jazz". He wrote a number of jazz standards, and his style ranged from refined to bombastic, reflecting his mother's attempts at classical training and his improvisational skills. His music is known for employing unusual time signatures, and superimposing contrasting rhythms, meters, and tonalities. The Dave Brubeck Quartet's best remembered piece, "Take Five", which is in 5/4 time and has endures as a jazz classic. He was also a respected composer of orchestral and sacred music, and wrote soundtracks for television.

He was born in the San Francisco Bay Area city of Concord, California, and grew up in Ione. His father was a cattle rancher, and his mother who had studied piano in her native England. Intending to work with his father on their ranch, Brubeck entered the College of the Pacific studying veterinary science. After serving in the army, he returned to college, this time attending Mills College in Oakland. He studied under Darius Milhaud, and had two lessons from Arnold Schoenberg at UCLA in an attempt to connect with High Modernism theory and practice. Brubeck did not accept Schoenberg's approach, although in "The Light in the Wilderness", his first oratorio, Jesus's twelve disciples are introduced each singing their own individual notes; it is described as “quite dramatic, especially when Judas starts singing 'Repent' on a high and straining dissonant note.” This oratorio, which was composed around 1968 is what brings us to our organ music at hand...