Legendary jazz pianist Dave Brubeck has died at the age of 91, the Chicago Tribune reports.
Brubeck, who lived in Wilton, was born on Dec. 6, 1920. A concert celebrating Brubeck's would-be 92nd birthday was scheduled to take place in Waterbury tomorrow.
Brubeck is known for penning a number of jazz standards, including "The Duke." His band, the Dave Brubeck Quartet, is best known for their song "Take Five."
According to the Tribune, Brubeck died of heart failure Wednesday morning at Norwalk Hospital on his way to a regular appointment with his cardiologist.
Howard Reich, an arts critic for the Tribune, writes the following:
Throughout his career, Brubeck defied conventions long imposed on jazz musicians. The tricky meters he played in “Take Five” and other works transcended standard conceptions of swing rhythm. The extended choral/symphonic works he penned and performed around the world took him well outside the accepted boundaries of jazz. And the concerts he brought to colleges across the country in the 1950s shattered the then-long-held notion that jazz had no place in academia.
As a humanist, he was at the forefront of integration, playing black jazz clubs throughout the deep South in the ’50s, a point of pride for him.
"For as long as I’ve been playing jazz, people have been trying to pigeonhole me,” he once told the Tribune.
