Take five. What else?

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At the Limelight in Cologne, Germany in 2004. Photo by Alexôme

Dave Brubeck, so kool that night. The music was charged with energy - it was. I felt his quartet was explaining everything in the world to me in a few songs.

Take a look at a little video collage with footage bits i recorded that night.

The magicians:

• Randy Jones: percussion
• Michael Moore: Bass
• Robert Militello: Saxophone and flute
• Dave Brubeck: piano

Previously only heard on my father's old LPs, (Take Five of course, dudam dudam duudam...), i witnessed the real thing at the Limelight in Cologne, yesterday on November 17, 2004.

I heard music. Heavenly music. Four white-haired men bemused, bewitched the audience. As old as wisdom, as young as action. Take Five culminated in the drummers´ powerful solo. You could heal illness with percussions wild as that.

Before Take Five came a slow song, the only song with a flute. It was like a fairy, a romance, faint and elusive. Like music under water.

They also played Unsquare Dance, the song that makes you clap with your hands.

I remember another song for Brubeck´s solopart, something that drifted into improvisations going back to J.S. Bach. Bach is kool when Brubeck plays it. This got me curious enough to check out some real Bach in the music store. Another song sounded like Errol Garner - according to my dad.

One song was dedicated to Count Basie.

Another song was brand new, not even recorded/distributed yet in Europe. Brubeck explained what inspired this song: At the prospect of him and his band being accomodated in a London flat, Brubeck mocked "Wow, that´s sharp". What he cared about more though were comfortable and fast trips from place to place. Instead he was supposed to endure long bus rides. So, the song expressed his mixed feelings about the comfort of a London flat versus the discomfort of long bus rides. He introduced it by saying something like: "I´ll go flat with my left hand, and sharp with my right hand."

At times Brubeck was kind of lying in front of the Bechstein piano, the way you hang in a garden chair on a sun-drenched day, sipping at your soda. The sax/flute player in contrast, a big man (almost wider than tall), boasted with energy - and it was amazing to hear his energy channeled into very ornamental sounds.