Jazz pianist Dave Brubeck dies

Washington: US jazz pianist Dave Brubeck, who performed classics like ‘Take Five’ and ‘Blue Rondo a la Turk’ - the latter of which he wrote - died Wednesday in a Connecticut hospital, his manager said. He was 91.

Brubeck, considered to be one of the most outstanding jazz pianists and composers, died of heart failure. He formed The Dave Brubeck Quartet in 1951 and eight years later the group issued ‘Time Out’, the first jazz album to sell more than a million copies. Brubeck was the second jazz musician to get on the cover of Time magazine, in 1954, after Louis Armstrong, who had appeared on the popular magazine`s cover in 1949. Although The Dave Brubeck Quartet broke up in 1967, the pianist kept up his musical activities with new projects for orchestra and other groups, as well as remaining one of the classic reference points of jazz in the following decades. David Warren Brubeck was born Dec 6, 1920, in Concord, California, where his father was a rancher. He had planned to follow in his dad`s footsteps, but turned to music in college. Brubeck, who was presented with the National Medal of Arts in 1994 and was a Kennedy Center honoree in 2009, had six children, four of whom became professional musicians. IANS